


With You I Stand In Hope

by Ryxl



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angela gets aged up some, Cuddlepiles, Gift Fic, Male Pregnancy, Moira and Doomfist die, Multi, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Poly Relationships, buckle up we're going on a feels trip, consent is important, don't judge by the relationship tags, fluff with a side of smut and some angst, it's cute i promise, magic dicks and extra holes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 00:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 50,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18354941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryxl/pseuds/Ryxl
Summary: Angela only intended to help Jack and Gabe get mated to each other, but wound up mated to both of them in the process. This comes in handy when they're both presumed dead in the aftermath of the explosion at Overwatch's Zurich Headquarters, and she recruits Ana to track them down. Meanwhile, Jesse McCree finds himself in need of some serious cash...and trips over an unexpected way to earn the money he needs.Later, Hanzo thinks he's identified a man sent to kill him, but the truth leads to the second chance he never thought he'd get. Elsewhere, Moira and Doomfist will bicker over whether it's really paranoia to assume Gabriel Reyes is dead. Unfortunately for them, Moira is proven right.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a gift for Mtex, and was originally intended as a Christmas gift except I only got half of it done by Christmas morning. I did my best to make all her favorite ships work, but as you can see, it took a couple of months to get them all to behave. If the prologue doesn't grab you, try chapter one! Less worldbuilding, more action.

~Angela~

Angela remembers the first time she saw Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes.

She had been sitting in Torbjörn and Ingrid’s house, trying to come to terms with it being the only home she had after her parents’ deaths, distracting herself from her unhappiness by watching the news and wallowing in the world’s unhappiness, and there they were. The planned Overwatch Strike Force was being announced, and they were the USA’s contribution: a matched pair of super-soldiers. Jack was just as tall as Gabriel, who was just as broad as Jack. Light and dark, day and night, sun and shadow. She watched them on the holovid, feeling something inside her struggle to react, and knew with utter certainty that they were both alphas.

In that moment, she understood why her parents had done whatever it was they’d done to retard her development. Although she was almost seventeen and had finished her standard academics, her body had only aged six months for every year past her fifth birthday and developmentally, she was only eleven. While nowhere near physically mature, her body was already struggling to produce pheromones that would attract those alphas, and she was intelligent enough to be horrified at how vulnerable she would have been to her hormones if not for her slowed development. Suddenly, the isolated village the Lindholms lived in went from a prison to a blessing. She hadn’t encountered an alpha in the flesh – well, aside from Torbjörn, but he was solidly mated to Ingrid and the older omega now seemed like a valuable source of information rather than a foolish brood mare of a housewife.

That day, Angela decided she wanted to know everything there was about being an omega, before she was old enough and the world was safe enough for her to venture out into it.

She never forgot the sun-and-shadow alphas, especially when her adoptive father grimly packed up and kissed his family – of which she had been a part since the age of five – before leaving to join the Overwatch Strike Force and proactively protect them by eliminating the dangers threatening the world.

During the Omnic Crisis and the messy period of cleaning up the wreckage and rebuilding afterwards, she kept tabs on what Reyes and Morrison were up to. The shocking announcement that they were romantically involved wasn’t news to her; she’d been analyzing their interactions and had come to that conclusion months beforehand.

Medicine became her passion; not just healing, although the deaths of her parents certainly fueled that. No, what really drove her to enroll in virtual medical school and pour all her energy into completing a grueling schedule of classes was the desire to figure out what her parents had done to her and how to replicate it. How to control her hormones. How to free herself – and others – from the demands of their biology.

She met them, a handful of times. The sun-and-shadow alphas, married but not mated, and the rest of the surviving Strike Force: the fierce Captain Ana Amari, her young daughter Fareeha, and the towering and boisterous Reinhardt. Although Ana’s eyes hesitated on her when she was announced as “my daughter Angela” along with the rest of the Lindholm children, she said nothing and no one else seemed to suspect there could be more to her than that. Each subsequent meeting went the same way: Angela blended in with the rest of the kids, and although Ana clearly suspected something, she kept it to herself. But meeting Jack and Gabriel…

They had a scent, something Angela had never smelled before. Something she was certain no one else smelled, not even Ingrid. Something deep and musky, warm like cinnamon but also cumin and cayenne pepper, wild and enticing. Her body still hadn’t properly entered puberty, but it was trying its hardest and she was glad to be dismissed as a quiet, studious pre-teen even though her mind was fully adult.

Sometimes, she suspected that even her adoptive parents forgot she was a woman in a girl’s body.

On what was celebrated as her fifteenth birthday, she got a five-year hormonal suppression implant and an internship at a prestigious hospital in Switzerland. The whole family was infected by the excitement of preparing for her to spread her wings and leave the nest: the road trip to scout out an apartment; scouring the neighborhoods for places to eat, shop, and relax; the shopping trips to furnish her new, solitary home; the communal decorating and celebration as they stayed in the hotel and she spent the night in a space that was wholly hers and hers alone, and then the loud and energetic meeting for breakfast and farewells the next day.

Over the next week, gifts arrived from Jack and Gabriel and Reinhardt: a small statue of a female knight fighting a dragon; something not quite a rug but also not a blanket that she hung on most of one wall; an assortment of cookbooks ranging from classic American fare to indulgent desserts to meals designed for people with little time or energy. Ana Amari visited in person, bearing gifts of scented candles and bath bombs and soothing music.

“Because when you’ve had a long day,” she said, eyes crinkling in amusement, “sometimes you just want to smother yourself in comfort for all the senses.”

Angela’s mouth dropped and her eyes widened, because although Ingrid had never discussed it, she always gifted her adoptive daughter with soothing scents and after a long day of studying or dealing with her siblings (all betas, thank god), all Angela wanted to do was hole up in a blanket nest and flood herself with good scents and soothing music.

“There’s a few links in the basket, under the candles,” Ana continued. “Good, supportive groups of omegas trying to balance their bodies with their careers. They kept me sane while Fareeha was teething. And before you ask,” she added as Angela’s mouth opened again, “I’ve been on suppressors since my daughter’s birth. I haven’t told anyone, not even Jack and Gabriel.”

“Oh,” Angela said quietly, still trying to process this new information.

Ana sat on the couch and patted the cushion beside her. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s really going on? I know you’re not Torbjörn’s or Ingrid’s.”

Hesitantly, Angela sat and told her story. How her parents had been friends of the Lindholms and left her with them while they were out doing dangerous things, how they’d feared for their omega daughter’s body developing faster than her mind and done…something…to rectify that before their deaths, and now she was twenty-five with a body still a teenager.

“I will be honest with you,” Ana said slowly when the explanation was over. “It was a relief when the doctor said ‘she’s a beta’ at Fareeha’s birth. I understand why your parents made the choice they did. If you ever need someone to talk to, come to me.”

“I will,” Angela promised shyly.

And she did. Over the next handful of years, as she climbed from intern to resident doctor to head of surgery, she kept in touch with Ana Amari and built a solid friendship with the older omega. Her apparent youth was initially shrugged off in the hospital as having ‘one of those faces’ and hidden under surgical masks, but within a year or two it was forgotten for her sharp and clever brain. No one suspected she was anything other than youthful-looking; no one suspected she was controlling more than just her menstrual cycle with hormonal implants. Then, just before her thirtieth birthday and the expiration of her suppressors, she published a paper on nanite healing that brought her to the attention of Overwatch’s science division.

Overwatch wanted her, wanted her brain, wanted to put her to work helping people in more than just one hospital.

She said yes.

 

* * *

 

Angela never expected things to go as far as they did.

The Commanders gave her a personal tour of the Zurich headquarters: they showed her not only her lab and quarters, but every section of the base before winding up in their quarters for a gourmet dinner that Jack Morrison had prepared himself. They were alphas, she reminded herself as her cheeks flushed a delicate pink. They were welcoming her to their ‘family’ because she was part of Overwatch now, and adopting people is what alphas _did_. They most likely did not know she was an omega at all, and they were certainly _not_ flirting with her - no matter how badly her body wanted them to. So she sat with them, and ate, and conversation turned to lighter, more personal matters. The wine was very good, and she may have had a glass too many by the time Gabriel presented them with dessert, something creamy with layers of light cake and orange slices.

Later, she would not be able to explain how or why she brought up the subject, but she did and after a stunned silence, they were amenable. Perhaps they had also had a glass too many, but they took her up on her offer to use her omega hormones – sure enough, they hadn’t known she was one, and she’d had to let them feel the expiring implants under her left arm – to spark their alpha hormones in response, and she promised to find a way to deny biology and get them mated to each other.

The first time was awkward all around. Angela peeled the scent-masking patches off the skin of her hips, revealing her scent glands, and watched as the two alphas began kissing and tenderly undressing each other. It didn’t take long before she was aroused by the sight, the sweet citrus scent her body had been trying to produce for so long billowing out into the room, no longer thwarted by physical immaturity or chemical suppressors. She sat in a chair, hugging a pillow to keep from hugging her knees self-consciously, while on the bed Jack and Gabriel stopped what they were doing, their eyes slipping shut as the cinnamon-cumin musk rolled out in response, making her ache to be filled. The sounds they made were deep, need and surprise as their boxers bulged, and reverently they freed the alpha erections they had never seen before.

Gabriel’s member was no longer a smooth shaft. Cartilage rings, three of them, had opened up into mushroom-like hoods that made Angela bite her lip and swallow a whimper. Jack’s had developed more gentle ridges that marched down the thickened sides of his cock, with gentle bulges at the base that could only be his uninflated knot. Small beadlike shapes lined the underside of his head, and when Gabriel caressed them with a gentle finger, his eyes slid shut and he shuddered.

While they stroked and licked each other, exploring these new developments and having completely forgotten her, she let the pillow fall to hide the motions of her fingers and she did some exploration of her own. Only after the three of them had all reached a climax did the scents fade. The fleshy ridges on Gabriel’s member relaxed, Jack’s knot deflated, and Angela’s omega orifice no longer ached to be filled.

She spent the night on the couch. Morning saw them all embarrassed; the two alphas chagrined at themselves for having forgotten about her, and her for having spent the night uninvited rather than slinking back to her own quarters. Over a breakfast that Jack cooked, they thanked her and tentatively scheduled another session where they promised to not forget that they had a guest.

When she next arrived for dinner and seduction, there was a hideaway bed made up and waiting for her, with a set of soft cotton pajamas in yellow and green folded up on the pillow. This time, she came armed with a medical scanner and they lay obediently on the bed as she took measurements from their alpha erections and their scent glands, flushed dark with arousal. They weren’t open, and she explained that the glands were tied to chemical cues. Jack’s eyes glazed over the first time she said ‘oxytocin’ and Gabriel nodded, but it was clear he only vaguely understood. In short, she told them, they _all_ had to be _very_ comfortable in order for the scent glands to open up and allow a mating bond to be formed.

They were going to be doing this for a while.

Meeting once a week for sexual experimentation – because the two husbands had to work up to even _attempting_ anal sex with alpha erections – wasn’t enough. Soon it was twice a week, then three or four times, and at some point she’d gone from pleasuring herself on the hideaway bed to fingers or tongues pleasuring her on the king-sized bed and sleeping between the two alphas, and then one night they all froze as Gabriel prepared to slide into her omega orifice. This would be her first time having full penetrative sex, either as a woman or as an omega, and the reality came crashing down on them that this was no longer ‘sexual experimentation with a friend’. They were about to cross the point of no return into a poly relationship, both alphas cooperating to spoil their omega, and they hadn’t even discussed it.

That night, they put patches on over their scent glands and sat on the couch, discussing their feelings and their relationship, and slept chastely.

In the morning, Gabriel gently made love to her, man to woman. Then, after breakfast, Jack stretched out on the bed and let her experiment with riding his normal erection. The three of them kissed and licked and sucked and nibbled, exploring and being explored, bringing her into the relationship as a woman before they let their alpha hormones get involved. She requested a couple of days to adjust before their next session, and solemnly they agreed.

That evening, with candles burning and music playing, Angela immersed herself in a hot bath with her favorite bath bomb and gave serious consideration to how she felt about this new development. Her body, of course, was exceedingly happy to be courted by two alphas. But her body had been trying to fling itself at these particular alphas for years now, so in Angela’s mind, its judgment was suspect. Omegas were attracted to alphas out of a desire for a protector, she reminded herself. Was she fixating on them because of the combination of the loss of her parents making her feel fundamentally insecure and their status as global protectors? And even if she was, did that change anything? She couldn’t deny that while she enjoyed receiving the attentions of two alphas, she also enjoyed that they were mostly emotionally focused on each other. They’d adopted her because that’s what alphas _did_ , and she’d allowed herself to be adopted because that’s what _omegas_ did, but while she enjoyed their company as friends...she wasn’t in love with them.

No matter how she came at the issue, that was the inevitable conclusion: she wasn’t in love with them. She enjoyed their company as friends, she enjoyed having them as protectors, she enjoyed their physical intimacy _very_ much, but while she loved them as people and the idea of being potentially mated to them was very attractive, she was not _in love_ with them.

The days before their next tryst were anxious as Angela worried about how Jack and Gabriel would react to her conclusions. She wanted to help them still; she was _determined_ to get them mated to each other, and if the cost of that was mating to both of them, then she would be content with that development.

But she was not in love with them.

When she slipped into their quarters for dinner, she found the table set as usual, but Jack and Gabriel were waiting for her in grim silence. They sat and served her and themselves and the three of them ate a very quiet dinner before adjourning to the couch. She sat between them, feeling very small and young even though she was ten years older than she looked, and whispered the words that had haunted her: _I’m not in love with you._

“I like you both a lot,” she said in a small voice when neither of them responded to that pronouncement, staring at her lap where her hands clasped each other tightly. “I enjoy... _being_ with you. I would be happy to be mated to both of you. But I’m not... _in love_ with either of you.”

There was a pause, and then Gabriel let out a sound of relief while Jack laughed. “I guess we got all worried for nothing,” he said teasingly. “Turns out we’re all on the same page, eh, Churrito?”

Gabriel embraced her, making her flush as she found herself pressed against his broad, firm chest. “We’re very fond of you,” he rumbled into her hair, “and as alphas, we adore you in every way. But Jack’s so gay he shits rainbows, and I’ve been head over heels for him since the first dumb farm-boy smile he flashed me back in SEP. We love you as a friend and as an omega, but _we’re_ not in love with _you_ , either.”

Relief coursed through Angela, and she melted into Gabriel’s embrace with a soft “ _Oh._ ” A minute later, she found her voice again and asked, “It will not cause any trouble, sharing me?”

Jack chuckled and scooted closer, sandwiching her neatly. “We talked about that, don’t worry. Nearest we can tell, our alpha sides have decided that since we were a couple first, we’re courting you _as_ a couple.”

“That would make sense,” she said in a small voice. “Alpha and omega instincts seem focused on ensuring a safe environment for reproduction and raising offspring, devoting resources to making sure the child will grow up healthy and happy, rather than simply producing as many young as possible and hoping one of them survives to procreate. Two alphas who are allied would be twice the protection. Not that any of us has the time to raise a child,” she finished dryly.

Gabriel snorted. “Have you _met_ my agents? I have all the children I can deal with already.”

“Have you _met_ my husband?” Jack joked, causing the hug sandwich to dissolve into mock-outrage, tickling, and laughter.

They didn’t have sex that night, choosing instead to just cuddle and reaffirm physical closeness after their days apart and emotional intimacy after their soul-searching.

 

* * *

 

Now that the uncertainty had been cleared up, Angela found herself much more comfortable with their relationship. That comfort, in turn, meant she found herself being much more confident and assertive than she’d expected to be. Even more surprising was the discovery of how _readily_ her alphas submitted to her will.

The realization that they were now _her alphas_ and she was _their omega_ should have felt odd, but all it felt was...right.

Having kept this development secret from everyone, even Ana, she could not bring herself to discuss it with the older omega. Instead, she went back to the omega forums and discovered that it was _normal_ for the omega to be the one effectively in control. Alphas offered and omegas accepted, as the saying went, and with renewed confidence Angela attended their trysts full of sexually adventurous ideas she had been too shy to suggest before.

Having two alphas inside her at once - Gabriel in her omega orifice, Jack’s more forgiving member in her vagina - was difficult to achieve but every bit worth the effort when the resulting blended orgasm left her dazed and incoherent for close to half an hour.

When she recovered, an unusual sensation drew her attention to her scent glands. Gabriel lazily passed her the medical scanner while a nearly-melted Jack alternated between nuzzling her hip and his husband’s.

“They’re open,” she breathed as the scanner showed what she had suspected. “Jack, lick your husband’s gland. Just one of them. And Gabriel, lick one of Jack’s.”

They obeyed without question, and with her heart in her throat she monitored the reaction. The enzymes activated, locking in genetic material, and both men shuddered and groaned as the process completed.

“You did it,” Angela whispered. “We did it. You’re bonded to each other. You’re mates,” she said, overwhelmed with emotions too tangled to name, expecting a reaction similar to the first time she’d used her omega hormones to spark their alpha erections: the husbands ecstatic, lost in each other, and her sitting utterly forgotten on the sidelines.

Instead, acting almost as one, they surged up and pressed her gently to the bed, lips tickling as they kissed identical trails from her breasts to her scent glands, tongues moving in unison as they licked the receptive spots. Then they crawled up the bed to present their unbonded glands, and with those tangled emotions causing her whole body to shake, she licked them.

Both alphas curled protectively around her as the bonding process swept through them, tingling that spread from her hips up her spine and into her brain, and then they were all groaning as the process completed, their triad complete and unbreakable. Then, just as impossible to resist, sleep reached up to drag them all down into sweet darkness.

 

* * *

 

When Angela woke up, she was aware first of her omega instincts being _exceptionally_ pleased. Then memory caught up.

“You bonded to me,” she complained to the alphas cuddled up contentedly on either side of her.

“Yup,” Jack answered, lazy and sleep-fuzzed.

“Sure did,” Gabriel murmured.

“That wasn’t- the plan was to get the two of you bonded _to each other,_ ” she said, feeling guilty because although that _had_ been the plan, she did not regret this development in the slightest.

“And we did.” Gabriel sounded too pleased with himself for someone who hadn’t had coffee yet.

Angela sighed. “You didn’t have to bond with me, you two.”

“We know.” Jack, while vaguely muzzy, sounded completely unrepentant.

“Then...why?”

“You’re our dove,” they said in unison.

She groaned.

“We talked it over,” Gabriel said, kissing her shoulder softly. “Even though we’re completely happy with each other, our alpha instincts still nagged at us to find an omega. And now we have.”

“Best way to make sure us war hawks aren’t thinking with our guns,” Jack murmured, kissing her other shoulder. “Now we’re mated to you, our peace dove, and that will make us look for peaceful solutions because the world is your nest, and we want it to be arranged the way you like it.”

She had no argument for that, although she felt like she ought to be making one. It felt wrong somehow to form a mating bond with the express purpose of simply satisfying alpha and omega instincts, but Angela was fairly certain that was societal expectations speaking. After all, her instincts were perfectly content being mated to _two_ alphas who would keep any offspring they had safe and raise them properly.

Not that they wanted children.

She was going to need to look into birth control devices, because now that they were mated, it was only a matter of time before they all became fertile.

Angela sighed. “All right, you two, we all have work to do and we can’t spend the whole day in bed, as much as we might like to.”

That got her kissed on both cheeks simultaneously while her mates murmured, “Yes, dove,” in unison.

 

* * *

 

The most difficult aspect of being mated, Angela discovered in the following months, was hiding it from everyone else. She was able to disguise a great deal of it with being medically involved for the purposes of getting them mated to each other, and once their friends found out they had been successful on that front, none of them particularly cared about anything but celebrating that victory. The scent-concealing patches she’d been using continued to hide her scent, and not even Ana detected any change in her fellow omega. Her adoptive father was, of course, gruffly proud of her - but he didn’t suspect that anything had changed in her biology.

Once the novelty of two alphas being mated to each other faded, no one took any special interest in how close she was to the commanders. Ana even commented that it was nice to see Angela had adjusted to her position and wasn’t being intimidated by who she was working with and for. It took a few more months before Angela stopped being afraid that someone would guess, but then the fear evaporated completely and she stopped thinking about it.

When Gabriel announced he was going on a mission, she thought nothing of it. Their trysts would be delayed a week, that’s all. Nothing worth getting worked up over. Sure, she missed being sandwiched and dinner with just Jack wasn’t the same, but it was just a couple of days. No real hardship. Then a report came in that had Jack withdraw, looking tense, and he refused to discuss it with her. The day of Gabriel’s schedule return came and went, with no sign of the Blackwatch commander _or_ his team, and Jack _still_ refused to talk to her. Angela discovered that she herself was ready to storm out there and drag him home, which was luckily enough of a shock that the anxiety released her and she promptly locked herself in her lab to plan a mobile response suit. Between the medical bed and the intravenous nutrition fluids she had there, not to mention the variety of stimulants, Gabriel had been back for three days before he managed to bypass the security on her lab while she was sleeping. She woke up sandwiched, with her favorite music playing and her favorite scents dabbed onto her body and the bodies of her mates.

Once she had been fed and pleasured into a pliant haze, she clung to Gabriel and cried at how worried she’d been that they’d lost him. That _she’d_ lost him. She’d alternated between working herself to the edge of coherency and anxiously checking her glands with a medical scanner every few minutes to make sure his was still locked to confirm that he was still alive. They talked deep into the night, reassuring her with soft touches and gentle kisses that they were both still there, and by morning she had the outlines for a solution. With her expertise in nanite technology, it didn’t take long at all for her to develop a nanite ink that would read the state of her scent glands and change color if anything interrupted the mating bond.

While she was working on that, Gabriel had been sketching, and when she presented him with the vial of ink he was ready. She lay in their bed, local anesthetic numbing her lower abdomen, Jack holding her hand and distracting her with nuzzling kisses while Gabriel carefully tattooed her. It took longer than she had expected, but the nanites healed her skin as they were inserted, and when she finally was able to stand and see what he had done, she gasped.

Two gorgeous roses circled her scent glands, vibrantly red.

 

* * *

 

The next few years saw her distribute nanite ink tattoos to the mates of Overwatch agents, after seeing how well her own tattoos helped her anxiety when one of her alphas went out on a mission. Unfortunately, she discovered when Jack came back from a mission with freed hostages but no Captain Amari, they helped _not at all_ with friends who she was not mated to.

She and Gabriel clung to Jack that night, none of them saying anything, just silently mourning the death of their friend and taking quiet comfort in each other’s presences. It was a long, sad, pain-filled week before Angela returned to her room one night to find an email waiting for her from an unknown address.

At first, she thought it was some sort of cruel joke - it claimed to be from Ana Amari. But whoever wrote it had referenced a time they’d had lunch together before Angela had joined Overwatch, something neither of them had talked about since, and begged her not to tell anyone. After a long night of wrestling with herself, imagining Ana both alive and dead, she sent a reply. Moments later, a response came in, and Angela burst into tears.

Ana Amari was alive.

She wanted to tell Fareeha, to ease the grief of her mates, but Ana had warned her that it wasn’t safe. _She_ wasn’t safe, and no one could know that she was alive. So they conversed in secret, sharing information while tensions at Overwatch grew. Angela voiced the idea to her mates that Overwatch construct a high-tech hospital, and they agreed, so she began spending as much time as possible out of the Zurich Headquarters. The tensions made her skin crawl every moment she was not alone with her alphas, like dozens of unseen eyes watching her every move. She was happier working on the hospital, and they were happier with her happy, and that’s why she wasn’t there the day everything went down.

 

* * *

 

When the sound of first explosion swept through the hospital, everyone froze. Then came the second, and the third, and someone started screaming. Angela ran for her mobile-response suit, galvanizing others as she passed them, and by the time the dust was starting to settle at Overwatch Headquarters there was a veritable swarm of rescue personnel surging towards the rubble with Angela leading the way. Hours passed in a haze of rescue efforts, lifting rubble and freeing bodies, the cries of the injured and the laments of the rescuers when they found a body devoid of life. It wasn’t until the sun was starting to set and someone pressed a bottle of water into her hand that she realized no one had seen either of the commanders, and her stomach knotted with dread as she fled for the dubious privacy of a semi-intact room. The mobile response suit seemed like a prison as she struggled to get it off her body, to pull up her sweat- and dust-caked tunic and run one trembling hand over her abdomen to reveal a streak of red where her fingers had wiped away the dirt. Crying now, she swiped at the other tattoo and saw red there as well.

For several minutes she just sat on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, crying out all the fear and stress of the last several hours. Although the death toll was terrifyingly high, both her mates had - somehow - survived.

The relief was short-lived, however. The search and rescue operations wound down and completed, and neither commander had been found among either the living or the dead. The roses on her hips remained vibrant, but her mates were declared officially missing in action, presumed dead, and the world mourned - the parts that didn’t jeer, anyway. Angela was grateful that they had kept their threesome secret, because it meant she could retire to her chateau for a week with no one to bother her.

It took Ana two days to arrive, and she did so in the dead of the night. Angela woke up to her old friend in the kitchen, making tea that got cold as they cried and hugged and cried some more.

“Your eye,” Angela said, over and over, touching the bandage gently.

“It is fine,” Ana insisted, hugging her tight. “Jack and Gabriel...”

“Are alive,” was the grim, firm answer.

Ana’s one dark eye shone with sympathy. “Angela...”

“I’m mated to both of them,” she said crisply.

That made Ana lean back in surprise. “So _that_ is how you were able to get them mated to each other?”

Angela nodded. “I developed a nanite ink to display the mated status of a scent gland. Red, the gland is still locked with a mate’s genetic material. Black, the source of that material has perished.” She tugged up her shirt, showing off the brilliantly red roses.

Ana’s remaining eye widened. “Then...”

“They are alive,” Angela said quietly. “I do not know where they are or in what state, but they are alive... _somewhere_.”

Equally grim, Ana hugged her again. “I have resources. I will find them.”

The younger omega trembled with the force of suddenly-kindled hope, and the fear that flared in its wake like shadow following flame. “But we don’t know where they went.”

“I will find them,” Ana repeated, her tone suggesting that it was in their best interest to come out of the woodwork on their own before she had to drag them forcibly out. It was remarkably comforting. “And of course I will keep in touch,” she added in a gentler voice.

That startled a weak, shaky laugh out of Angela. “You are a blessing,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Thank you.”

Ana smiled, but it was sad. “They were my idiot boys before they were yours,” she said softly. “They are family. _You_ are family. I will travel to every corner of the map if need be, but I _will_ bring them home.”

 


	2. Desperate times call for porn

~Jesse~

Jesse McCree read the want ad for what seemed like the millionth time.

“Wanted: male omega to star alongside female alpha in masked porn shoot. Your identity and mine kept secret, guaranteed. Paying 20k per scene up to 10 scenes, untraceable. Transportation provided, all expenses paid.”

If it hadn’t come from the most trusted of his sources, he never would have given it a second thought. He remembered all too well what happened to male omegas who let their guard down, but…

Absently, he rubbed just under his left armpit. One of the perks of being with Overwatch had been confidential hormonal suppressors, the good kind that lasted five years. Angela had given him one “for the road” when he’d taken off, but that was almost five years ago and with the price on his head, he could barely afford food. He damn sure couldn’t afford a suppressor, much less a good one, and forget about what he’d need to do to get one legally when just showing his face was a federal offense in six countries. Twenty grand would buy a black-market suppressor easily and leave him with enough to stay off anyone’s radar for months after, and that was just for one shoot. Two hundred big ones would set him up for life. In the morning, he decided, he’d call the number linked in the ad.

That night was not a restful one for Jesse. His nightmares alternated between doing the shoot and getting gang-banged by men long dead, and his suppressor running out and having to flee alphas in a crowded public place. It was almost five in the morning when he gave up and called.

“Yes?” The voice was cool, uninterested, detached, ungendered. Sounded omnic.

Jesse cleared his throat. “I’m callin’ about the ad.”

The silence on the other end changed. “For yourself, or for someone else? I warn you, we only want willing participants.”

Well, that was somewhat of a relief. “For myself.”

“Ah, excellent. And your alias, sir?”

Alias. He hadn’t thought about that, and now he felt foolish for not having one ready, so he grabbed at the first thing to come to mind. “Stone Johnson.”

“Mr. Johnson, how soon are you able to be picked up by a driverless vehicle and transported to our secure studio?”

Jesse scratched his tangled hair. “Hell, give me an hour to shower and get some breakfast and you can have me after that.”

The voice laughed. “It will take more time than that for the vehicle to arrive, most likely. Please provide the address you wish to be picked up at.”

Dutifully, he read off the address of the shady motel. The voice made a thoughtful noise.

“An auto-cab will arrive in two hours for Stone Johnson, voice-locked to you. It will drive you to the vehicle’s location, a trip of roughly four hours. The vehicle is equipped with modern entertainment amenities and stocked with both food and liquor. You will be on the road approximately a day and a half. At the conclusion of the shooting, the same vehicle will transport you wherever you wish to go. Is this acceptable to you, Mr. Johnson?”

Jesse shook himself. “Acceptable? That sounds like a god-damn dream. Hell yeah, that’s acceptable.”

The voice laughed again. “Your future co-star prides herself on providing for her partners in order to keep good relations with them. She looks forward to meeting you, Mr. Johnson.”

“Well, hell, I look forward to meeting her too.”

They hung up and Jesse leaned back, grinning. He may have actually found a good thing, the second time in his life it’d happened. Time for a shower, a shave, and breakfast.

 

* * *

 

The auto-cab pulled up and honked. “Stone Johnson,” he announced, and the door slid open. Jesse climbed inside, dropped his bag to the floor, and stretched out on the luxury seat while the door slid shut again. A moment later, the cab started moving and he settled in for a nice four-hour nap.

He woke to a honk four dreamless hours later and realized the cab had stopped. As soon as he sat up, the door slid open and he grabbed his bag before climbing out to have a look around. The cab had stopped at an isolated rest area, barely more than a clear stretch off the road, two sad picnic tables and a trash can. The only other vehicle – because the cab had already driven off – was a state-of-the-art camper bus, and the door opened as he approached. Inside, it was just as luxurious as he expected it to be and the first thing he did was visit the bathroom to relieve himself. The camper was on the road by the time he got out, and he grabbed a beer and a sandwich from the fridge before sprawling on the couch to see what his entertainment choices were. There was a selection of old Westerns, to his delight, and he fired one of them up.

Whoever his future co-star was, he was already feeling pretty damn charitable towards her. Friendly, even. Maybe…hopeful. He’d never been with a female alpha before. Hell, he’d never properly been with a _male_ alpha before, either. One attempted rape that ended with broken furniture and no penetration didn’t exactly count.

Jesse snorted. A virgin omega getting deflowered on camera ought to bring in some good money, right?

At the same time, though, he couldn’t deny he was a bit apprehensive. He’d never had anything in his…other hole…and he’d never asked Angela about her private life. He had no idea what he was going into, no clue what to expect. Hopefully, whoever he was gonna let fuck him for twenty grand a pop would be willing to chat first.

The day passed in mindless comfort, and the bed was the best thing he’d slept on since leaving Overwatch. As the automatic lights dimmed, he felt a stabbing moment of loss for his pseuso-dad, presumed dead in the absence of a body. Gabriel Reyes had been a hell of a man, everything an alpha _should_ be in his opinion, and Jack Morrison had only been a close second in Jesse’s mind because Reyes had been the one to make Jesse the offer of ‘rat on your gang and we take you in and no one has to know you’re not a beta if you don’t want them to’. He missed that crotchety old bastard, and he’d regret the way they’d parted for the rest of his life, but he hoped that whether Reyes was glaring down at him from heaven or up at him from hell, he’d support his pseudo-son’s decision to whore himself out for a _lot_ of goddamn money.

When Jesse woke up, for a moment he couldn’t remember where he was. Then the sounds of traffic filtered into his brain and it came back to him. He hopped out of bed and started as the coffee maker came on all by itself, then laughed at himself and squeezed into the shower stall. Hot water, soap, shampoo, soft towels, and he felt like a new man as he regarded his old clothes with distaste. Well, coffee was done, so Jesse poured himself a mug and grabbed some kind of pastry from one of the cabinets and decided, once the caffeine had kicked in, to explore. The voice had said a day and a half, and he took that to mean a full 36 hours, which meant he wouldn’t reach the studio until late at night.

He’d had a sandwich for lunch and microwaved some fresh burritos for dinner, but that had been the extent of his exploring. Now he opened every compartment, pulled out drawers, checked cabinets, and made a variety of pleased and surprised exclamations. Crunching on an apple, he pulled a prime rib dinner – complete with vegetables and potatoes – out of the freezer and stuck it in the oven, which read the chip on the side and began heating all by itself and helpfully started a timer for when his lunch would be ready. He pulled soft cotton pants and silk boxers and a loose cotton shirt out of the clothing drawers and then only pulled on the boxers because he noticed a silk dressing gown hanging in the closet. With nothing but cool silk on his skin, the omega part of him that so rarely got its sensory indulgences sighed in bliss and Jesse grabbed another pastry before sprawling on the couch again.

If this was what all her co-stars got treated to, he wondered why she needed a want ad looking for another one – but then he figured they all went the ten shoots and never came back, like he was planning on doing. He wondered what she looked like. What his _predecessors_ had looked like. How she’d gotten this bus into position so fast. It was going to be an interesting time, that was for sure.

The morning passed in a blur of dumb games that nevertheless were amazingly satisfying and he realized that his secret passion for them all these years had been an omega thing – something his future co-star must have known, and stocked her luxury bus with everything that would appeal to her prospective co-stars. As he was feasting on some damned good prime rib, easily the best food he’d had in a freaking decade, he wondered what it must have been like for her, being a female alpha. He knew that as a male omega, he wasn’t as straight as he liked to believe. He still had preferences, of course, but if a handsome enough alpha smiled at him…

Was she the same way? Half wired one way, half reacting the other despite herself? Had she kept her nature hidden, had she been assaulted for it? Whatever her past, clearly she’d found a way to exploit it for profit. FemA/MaleO porn was the stuff of legends, enough that he’d never actually found any although there had been plenty of fakes with trans actors exploiting their genitals. But no matter how good the prosthetics were, deep down he knew that wasn’t a real alpha erection and it wasn’t a real omega orifice.

Now he wished he’d bothered to check out the omegas-only social media groups Angela had given him links to. At the time, he’d been sure they’d laugh him out the first time he let slip that he was male, but there were still resources they might have provided and now he was on a bus with no internet access, headed to an unknown location to have omega sex for the first time.

The afternoon passed more restlessly, Jesse swaddling himself in soft cotton and a fleece blanket and occasionally drowning his nerves in some really good hard liquor as he tried and failed to lose himself in more Westerns, reality TV, cooking shows, and the silly games that were so soothing. He snacked on some popcorn mix that was…actually _really good_ , it had dark chocolate and dried raspberries and he felt like a glutton as he ate the whole bag but it made him feel so much more comfortable, and he curled up on the couch for a little shut-eye.

Three hours later he woke up and re-heated the rest of the coffee, shoved his clothes into his bag, and stuck a pizza in the oven. Although he was almost starting to feel at home on the bus, he knew it wouldn’t be too much longer before he arrived at the studio and apprehension fluttered in his belly. It was mostly dumb, he knew that, but his life had taught him young that he had to look out for himself, and the years in Overwatch had taught him that it was better to be prepared than caught unawares. As his dinner cooked, Jesse argued with himself over what to be wearing when he arrived – _his_ clothes, or the clothes provided. Wearing _his_ clothes could be seen as refusing his…employer’s?...hospitality. But at the same time, wearing the provided clothes could be seen as taking advantage of that same hospitality. Wearing his own clothes would make him feel more secure, but the soft cotton and silk was definitely more comfortable and his own clothes weren’t exactly fresh and neat. He went back and forth for a handful of minutes before he remembered the small ultrasonic clothes machine in the bathroom. At the time of its discovery, he’d wondered why there was such a small clothes cleaner on the bus, but now it made sense: it was exactly the right size for one outfit.

Jesse tossed his clothes in and it hummed softly as it turned itself on, numbers on the display informing him that they would be clean by the time he was done eating his pizza. Problem solved; he could step out wearing his own clothes and leave the borrowed ones on the bed as if to say _thankee kindly for your hospitality, but I ain’t no moocher_.

As he took his pizza out of the oven, he wondered if his predecessors had done the same thing. Shit, did his future co-star know more about being an omega than he did? That would be an embarrassing thought if he weren’t damn sure that his predecessors had been the same way.

Still, after he’d finished eating, he freshened up his shave and brushed his teeth while waiting for his clothes to be done. No reason _not_ to make a good first impression, right?

The bus slowed shortly after that, sound and angle suggesting it had turned into the entrance to an underground parking garage, but it…kept going. A tunnel, then. Jesse grabbed his bag and sat on the couch, no longer seduced by the opulent surroundings. Several minutes later, the bus glided to a gentle stop and the door opened. He climbed out warily, trying to look everywhere at once without getting distracted, but there was nothing to see. It was a smooth white underground garage with a neatly-dressed omnic waiting by the smooth white stairs.

With nothing else to do, Jesse walked towards the omnic, who bowed.

“Mr. Johnson, I presume? Come right this way, the mistress would very much like to meet you before showing you to your room.”

Jesse nodded and followed the omnic up spiraling white stairs for about…more than thirty steps. He wasn’t sure exactly how many floors that was, or how many steps he’d taken before he started counting. The stairwell opened into an elegant entry hall like some kind of fancy hotel lobby, and sitting on one of the couches was a woman who looked like she could be anywhere from fifteen to thirty-five, bent over a tablet with purple-tipped hair falling in a curtain in front of her face. She was wearing something like a silk robe or a kimono in rich purple with gold designs around the edges, and his guide was…leading him to her?

“Miss Sombra,” the omnic announced in that unimpressed, genderless voice. “Your new co-star: Stone Johnson.”

This…Sombra…looked up to examine him with purple eyes he was _sure_ weren’t natural. He guessed she was around thirty, give or take, and more likely younger than that. _This_ was the female alpha he’d be having sex with? She was…she was…

…she was looking at him with more surprise than he was sure he was showing, and that was _saying_ something.

“Jesse?” she exclaimed in a low, rich voice that did unfair things to his manly bits and omega bits alike. “Jesse McCree?”

_What?_

 

* * *

 

~Sombra~

Sombra had learned early on that life wasn’t fair, and preying on the powerful was justified because they preyed on the weak and poor and unlucky. Medical care was scarce in the slums of Dorado, and she’d never given a second thought to alphas and omegas outside of sparing a moment to pity those who sold their bodies on more… _exclusive_ markets. At the whims of their hormones, she’d thought. Shackled by the wants and needs of their biology. She considered herself clever for being able to claw her way into a more comfortable lifestyle through hacking and blackmail rather than whoring, and at the age of seventeen had her sights set on whatever secrets a certain crotchety – but wealthy and influential – man was hiding.

Her sources informed her that he enjoyed girls who hadn’t fully matured, and she set a digital trap with herself as bait, thankful that her build was slight enough to pass as younger than she really was. Things went according to plan, and she found herself invited to spend the weekend at his estate. When he went to molest her, she figured, she’d use a clever little device to zap him and go from there. But when the time came, something completely unexpected happened.

He smelled _good_.

It was a sweet smell, somehow sharp like citrus, lemon-flavored cotton candy drifting around him in invisible clouds as he leered at her, naked and damp from a shower, towel barely covering her breasts and groin. Like an entire candy shop on a hot day, beckoning all and sundry to come and taste its wares, and suddenly, she was _hungry_. A tingle she’d never felt before swept down to intensify between her legs, and her prey looked…scared. Still interested, even more so, but uncertain and apprehensive.

Then she felt her clitoris swell into a phallus easily the length of her forearm, and saw his eyes drop as it brushed her towel aside. Dark red, tapered to a point and adorned with rows of beadlike bumps from base to just under the head, it pointed assertively at the man and she understood.

He was an omega and she…she was an _alpha_.

No wonder he only dallied with underage girls.

Her would-be rapist went from aggressive and domineering to submissive and fawning as soon as his brain caught up to the way the situation had changed, desperate and eager to please if only she would use her alpha erection on his aching omega orifice. Sombra took full advantage of that eagerness to earn her attention, and it was hard to say which was more heady – the feeling of tightness holding her in place as her knot swelled with her orgasm, or the feeling of power as she turned a ruthless and powerful man into a mewling pet. That weekend proved educational as well as profitable, and to her surprise, it was the hidden recording equipment from which she harvested the sweetest spoils. There were a lot of very wealthy people, she learned, who would pay a great deal to see a female alpha fuck a male omega. Suddenly, she had an entirely new way to find targets for hacking and blackmail, and a source of income that far exceeded her expectations.

Her first omega suffered an “unfortunate accident” some months later, after she’d gotten her fingers into his accounts and learned all she could about what made him tick. The estate would have gone up for auction in the absence of any heirs, but it got shuffled off to a shell company and then Sombra had a luxurious nest to lure other male omegas into – after some renovations, redecorating, and a change of staff, of course. She cast her nets out, seeking the rare pearls in the proverbial ocean, the diamonds in the rough, and built a network. She learned about omega nature, and alpha nature, and chemical suppressors. Male omegas answered her ads and she ferried them into her nest in decadent comfort, discussed scenes to act out, had some truly _amazing_ sex, and sent them on their way with enough cash to line their own nests however they pleased. It was a pretty good life, all things considered.

Then Overwatch fell.

Gabriel Reyes had always been her hero. But after learning that she was an alpha like him, her admiration intensified. It was _particularly_ inspiring to Sombra that he bucked the societal norms of alpha and omega and remained in a monogamous relationship with Jack Morrison, another alpha. The newfound freedom she’d won with her hidden cock would _not_ be a hormonal chain around her neck, shackling her to a life of following omegas around like a stray dog scenting a bitch in heat; she could choose when (if ever) to relinquish her womanly virginity and who (if anyone) to have a relationship with. But as the years passed, she never found anyone that really got her attention – with the exception of her teenage crush, Jesse McCree. It didn’t matter; she had enough on her plate that romantic fantasies barely registered as more than a passing thought. But after the messes…after McCree stormed off to vanish into the world…she found herself keeping a digital eye on the cowboy. Following reports and rumors of the vigilante, tracking his movements, and occasionally interfering from a distance to keep him from being locked up.

With both Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes presumed dead, it was the least she could do to honor her hero.

The first time she’d sent the automated bus to fetch an omega guest, he’d bitched her out for the cameras. Omegas were sensitive to being watched, he’d complained, and she’d apologized and spoiled him and asked him to teach her more about omega nature so she could better pamper her guests. Paid him handsomely as a consultant, which fluffed his feathers enough that he’d done the sex scenes with her and walked away a rich man. So she’d taken out all the cameras, and with her omnic assistant handling the transportation arrangements for her, she had no idea who her new guests were until they arrived. The latest one had come from the last city McCree had been seen in, but statistically that meant nothing and she’d put it out of her head. Too many other things to do, no time to entertain silly fantasies. She kept her eyes on the tablet until her guest had been announced, but then she looked up and-

“Jesse?” The name burst out of her, shock and incredulity. “Jesse McCree?”

He looked every bit in shock, which was fair, but he- he was an omega? He was her guest! She was going to have _sex_ with him, alpha to omega! And he-

-he was missing his left arm.

“What happened to your arm?” she blurted, reaching out with one hand but snatching it back. “You don’t have to answer that. I’m sorry. I’m…a little flustered because you were my teenage crush. Hi. I’m Sombra. Welcome to my home. How was your trip?”

“It was fine,” he answered reflexively. “Nice. Comfortable. I was your crush?”

Heat stole up her cheeks and she was grateful for the scent-blocking patches she was wearing, because she’d be wafting cinnamon and almonds all over the room otherwise. “You were. Reyes was my idol. Ever since…the explosion…I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye out for you. Scrambling communications once in a while, messing with official databases to give you some breathing room.”

“That was _you?_ ” Jesse sat on the couch, far enough away to register as safe to her alpha instincts, but facing her. “You got me out of some tight spots, Miss Sombra, and I owe you for that.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” she insisted. “The whole world owes Overwatch. I’m just doing my part. Are you wearing patches,” she asked, changing the subject, “or do you have implants that will need to come out?”

“Implants,” he admitted uneasily. “Been on ‘em since I signed up with Overwatch, but they’re about used up. That’s why I answered your want ad.”

“We’ll get you fitted with new ones before you go,” she assured him immediately. “If…you _want_ to go.” The words were an almost-shy afterthought.

Slowly, Jesse smiled, making her cheeks heat again. “Why, Miss Sombra, I think you still have a crush on me.” he drawled.

Grimacing, she nodded.

“Well, it would be rude of me to turn down your hospitality before I’ve even tasted it, so why don’t we leave that for later? Let’s get these dying implants outta me, and…uh…I ain’t never been with an alpha,” he admitted in a rush, not looking at her.

Sombra reached out and laid her fingertips on his wrist. No more than that: just enough physical contact to be reassuring without intruding on his space. “Most of my guests haven’t,” she said gently. “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.” For an instant, she closed her eyes in disbelief that she was really about to do this. “I’ve…never been with anyone as a woman,” she confessed, drawing surprise and awe out of him.

“Miss Sombra,” he said slowly, “are you telling me this because you want me to rectify that situation?”

“Not for the cameras,” she blurted, cheeks flaming. “That is…not unless you want.”

He took her hand and raised it to his lips, a breath of a kiss caressing her knuckles. “We’ll discuss it later,” he said softly.

She led him to the medical room first, offered him the removal device and politely averted her eyes as he took his shirt off and removed his implants. Although she knew it would take a few hours for the residual effects to fade, she couldn’t help but sniff hopefully, eager to get a whiff of his unique omega scent.

Cloth rustled, and he announced, “All done.”

Sombra turned back around. “You’ll be scenting by morning, but we won’t do anything until we’ve discussed the scenes and made any necessary changes. Is there anything you need or want before I show you to your room? Which is not any of the places we’ll be performing,” she added firmly after a brief pause, and was rewarded by seeing her guest relax just a little.

Jesse scratched his scalp with both hands, then examined the clunky metal prosthetic with a pensive expression. “Your ad said both our identities would be kept secret, but this is just a tad distinctive. Now, I don’t know what sort of scenes you’ve got lined up, but uh…could I maybe get a glove for it or something?”

“How attached to it are you?” she asked immediately, and he laughed.

“Well, it’s kinda grafted onto my arm, so…very.”

“That’s nothing a good circular saw can’t fix,” she joked. “Seriously though, I have connections. I can get you one that will look and feel like your lost hand if you want it, fingerprints and all, although you may want to just get dummy fingerprints. Or I can get you one that works better, moves smoother, looks cooler, tailored to your sense of style. Or both,” she added when he looked interested. “Nothing wrong with having options. I don’t have any skills in the kitchen, or with art, or making things with my hands to lavish on you. What I’m _good_ at is finding the best things and figuring out how to get my hands on them. This will be a gift, and you’re under no obligation to do anything even if you choose to accept it, but it’s alpha nature to lavish good things on omegas we care about, and I care about you.”

For a long moment, Jesse stared at her, mouth open. Then he shook his head and smiled. “That explains a few things. Alright, we’ll talk about my arm in the morning. For now, I think I’d like to see my room and get a little shut-eye.”

 

* * *

 

~Jesse~

He followed Sombra through what felt like a small palace to the biggest, most decadent-looking bedroom he’d ever seen in any movie, not just his life. It was plush and comfortable without being frilly, including the genuine four-poster bed with _actual curtains_ , solid velvet ones in a rich maroon. This was a man’s room, absolutely, but it was also a lavish den that got him thinking more about Sombra’s offer to just…not leave.

“There’s a full bar and a kitchenette behind this panel,” Sombra said, touching a discreet hand-panel on the wall – which slid aside to reveal that she’d told the truth. “I’ll be having breakfast at eight, with lunch at one and dinner at seven, but if you’re hungry before or after or just don’t feel like doing a formal meal, there should be plenty to keep you from starving. Bathroom is there,” she said, pointing to a double door, “and that one is the closet. There’s a variety of sizes, of course. Temperature and light controls here, and there’s a remote on the bedside table. Room also responds to voice commands. Can you think of any questions before I leave you to get settled?”

Jesse shook his head, trying to clear it enough to think. “Uh…not really?”

She smiled at him, which did nothing to help clear his head. “Alright. If I don’t see you at breakfast, that’s fine. I do hope you’ll join me for lunch, and we can discuss things afterwards. Sleep well, Jesse.”

“Thank you,” he said reflexively. “Uh…you, too. Good night, Miss Sombra.”

Another smile that did bad things to his concentration, and she slipped out with the door closing behind her. It wasn’t even that she was being flirty, he thought as he went to investigate the bathroom, leaving his bag on the floor. She was just so gosh-darned _happy_ that she was able to provide a sweet pad like this for him.

Then he stepped into the bathroom and stopped dead. There was a state-of-the-art shower on one wall, with a fancy automated wash-your-ass toilet nearby and a sink that looked like it could shave your face and brush your teeth for you at the same time. On the opposite wall, a more traditional shower in a claw-footed bathtub with a regular ol’ fancy-ass toilet and sink with brand new toiletries on it. In the corners were not one, but _two_ giant tubs that could fit a small orgy, and one of ‘em was a Jacuzzi. A row of bottles and containers on the shelves around the other were no doubt bath bombs and bubble bath and other thing he’d never let himself buy, but had secretly always wanted to try out.

He retreated to the kitchenette and grabbed a beer out of the fridge.

The closet was a walk-in the size of the shitty motel room he’d slept in just two nights ago, and he browsed the clothes until he found flannel pajamas in his size. He’d always thought he was too proud to ever be a kept omega, letting some alpha buy his affections like a god-damned trophy wife, but he’d never imagined that the alpha would be a woman who was not only unfairly attractive, but _respected_ him.

Sleep came easily, swaddled in flannel and protected by velvet walls. He didn’t dream.

 

* * *

 

Morning arrived gently, somewhere around seven-thirty, and Jesse stumbled into the decadent bathroom to relieve himself and freshen up for breakfast. The high-tech shower was like a water massage, and thinking about how Sombra wanted _him_ to deflower her not only made him sit on the fancy toilet to rub one out, but he realized the reason he kept smelling clementine oranges was because he was aroused not only as a man, but as an omega.

That was going to take some getting used to.

There were scent-blocking patches on the counter by the sink, he discovered as he was shaving. Not the heavy-duty ones that lasted a month, but the cheap kind sold alongside condoms in bathroom vending machines and in boxes of thirty, meant for daily use or when you just want to make sure you don’t scent during some important event. Wear ‘em to work, take ‘em off at home, that sort of thing. He hadn’t used patches in years, but he eagerly pulled two out and peeled the paper off the back before pressing them over the dark spots that marked his scent glands. Not as big as a nipple but not as small as a mole, they stood out against his skin enough that he had no problem placing the patches despite having ignored them for years.

With the last whiffs of clementine clinging to him, he rummaged around in the closet until he found some broken-in jeans that fit him well enough and a button-up that looked comfortable. Brand-new socks and underwear were a luxury he reveled in, and once he’d laced his boots up he felt like someone an attractive young lady would justifiably _want_ to have sex with.

The instant he stepped out of his room at 8:05, a floating droid lifted up off the floor.

“Good morning,” chirped the pre-recorded message. “If you follow the droid, it will lead you to the dining room.”

That was mighty considerate of Sombra, Jesse thought as he followed it through the mansion and into a dining room that could easily feed a dozen. A hot table off to one side had an assortment of breakfast foods, another table had juice and cold foods like fruit and yogurt, and a damn fine coffee service let him doctor his morning drink any way he could possibly want it. Sombra was sitting at one end of the table, where she could see the whole room, with a bowl of yogurt and a plate of French toast. Jesse helped himself to eggs and hash browns and sausage and regular toast with butter and sat down across from her. Again she gave him that delighted smile, and he was glad he’d put on patches because he could hide a boner, but he couldn’t hide smelling like someone was peeling an orange.

“Sleep okay?” she asked as he picked up his fork, and he nodded.

“Best damn sleep of my life,” he admitted easily. “You sure know how to make a fella feel at ease.”

“Practice,” she responded dryly. “Would you believe I didn’t know I was an alpha until I was seventeen? I spent a lot of time learning what makes omegas comfortable once I decided to go into the porn business. But it was worth it,” she said, giving him a smile that was somehow softer, more personal, than the others. “I’m finally be able to meet you, and I can provide you with everything you deserve, both as a man and as an omega I care about? _Totally_ worth it.”

Jesse took a sip of his coffee to cover the heat stealing up his cheeks. “It’s mighty flattering that you think I’m worth all that,” he said quietly.

One slim hand, skin just a few shades darker than his own, reached out to touch his wrist. “You’re worth it,” she said firmly. “Even if we don’t do any scenes together, even if we don’t do _anything_ together, you will always have a room under my roof whenever you want it and for as long as you want it.”

Although the patches were doing their job, for the first time in his life he _wanted_ an alpha to go where he’d never even let his fingers explore. Sombra was offering comfort and security and respect without asking anything in return, without demanding that he buy it by letting her have access to his body, and that was somehow the most attractive thing he’d ever experienced.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice almost too low for himself to hear, but when he raised his eyes to hers she was beaming with relief and pride.

He’d always thought the omegas were the submissive ones in a pairing, trophies that let their alphas lavish everything on them, but he was coming to understand that it was the other way around. She, the alpha, was laying everything out as an offering and he had the power to accept…or to deny her and walk away. Omegas weren’t the submissive ones at all; everything alphas did was in hopes that the omega of their affections would say yes, and any alpha trying to force that answer in any way would only invite rejection by making the omega feel unsafe.

Bolstered by this realization, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “I’m looking forward to discussing the scenes with you,” he said as she blushed faintly. “If you wanted to discuss more personal things after breakfast, though, I’d be A-Okay with that.”

“I’ll see what I can reschedule,” she teased.

 

* * *

 

~Sombra~

They talked through breakfast, getting-to-know-you chatter that told her more than she suspected Jesse realized. What he’d done to entertain himself on the trip, things other omegas had done on their trips, his likes and dislikes. She had a holoscreen open while she ate, the other hand making notes in preparation for selecting the bedroom he would like the most and transforming it into his personal nest. That opened the conversation to technology, and how augmented she was. She confirmed that her eyes were… _enhanced_ , and lifted her hair to show the cranial augmentations. That led to the subject of his arm, and how it was attached, and whether he wanted to cover it up for a few scenes or wait until she’d been able to replace it.

“That depends on the scenes you got planned,” he said with the smile that made her tingle.

They moved into a tour of the mansion and its gardens once they’d finished eating, discussing scenarios and locations, positions and kinks. The garage was actually a high-tech set, she informed him, the white material being able to act as an old-fashioned green screen with hard-light projectors crafting sets and props.

Jesse’s face lit up. “You mean you could make this the set of an old Western?”

“I turned it into the ocean for a guy who loved that old movie _Titanic,_ ” she said smugly, “so a Western should be easy unless you want to fuck on horseback.”

He sniggered. “Naw, I was just thinking of maybe a saloon wench watching a shoot-out through a window and then the winner – me – swaggering upstairs to claim his prize and getting the best surprise of his entire life.”

She paused in the middle of the hallway, head tilted in thought. “It could work,” she said. “I have a thespian omnic on staff who plays odd roles, and xie would _love_ the drama of a Western shoot-out. The bad guy-”

“Black hat.”

“-black hat threatening the saloon wench, backhanding her – me – into a table or something and you springing to my defense, a dramatic shoot-out defending my honor, then the sex. I like it.”

That tickled him, she could see. “I’ve always wanted to do a scene like that,” he mumbled, cheeks flushed. “Just…maybe not my first scene?”

Sombra laid her hand on his wrist in a comforting gesture. “Do you have any thoughts on how you want to lose your virginity?” she asked gently.

His gently-flushed cheeks darkened to red. “I…don’t think I’ll be anything but nervous. This is the first time I’ve been off suppressors since I was seventeen.”

“Do you want to run with that?” Sombra moved her hand from wrist to bicep, keeping her voice warm and lightly-teasing. “Nervous omega picked up in a bar by a hot alpha, goes back to her place for an amateur porn shoot?”

The laugh that burst out of Jesse was deep and rich and genuine, and it made her pulse race in the best way. “You mean, cover my being as nervous as a teenager by having the script call for me being nervous? That’s a mighty devious plan, Miss Sombra, and I think I like the way you think. Do I actually get to drink on set?”

She grinned at him, feeling a flutter in her chest. “Mister Jesse, I am a professional and I don’t cheat my co-stars. We do this the way _you_ want to do this. If you want a few drinks before getting deflowered, then pick the bottle and I’ll pour for you. If you don’t want to risk it, I’ll pour you apple juice.” Three beats, and her grin widened. “You call the _shots_ , cowboy.”

That got him laughing so hard that he had to lean against the wall and struggle in vain to not slide down to the floor, then wound up on the floor anyway. She sat next to him, close enough for them to feel the heat of each other’s bodies but not touching.

“You’re doing a mighty fine job of seducing me, Miss Sombra,” he mock-accused between chuckles.

“I am doing no such thing,” she protested with fake indignation, grinning broadly. “I’m doing my best to make the idea of sex with me into something you _want_ to have happen, not something you’re doing just because I’m paying you. And if something more happens to develop between us, well…” She drew a steadying breath. “…I certainly wouldn’t object to that.”

The gentle brush of whiskered lips against her cheek was something she hadn’t expected, and she could feel the heat coming off her skin as blood rushed to her face.

“I’ve been with a couple women,” he said in a low voice, his right hand covering her left gently. “But none of ‘em were anything other than a roll in the hay. I think that _something more_ might already be developing between us, and I think I like it, but I don’t want to rush into anything.”

Sombra licked her lips and turned her head enough to catch his eye and nod. “You call the shots,” she said again. “If you want me to seduce you by letting you seduce me, then that’s the way we’ll do it. People think the alpha gives the orders, but they’re wrong. The alpha doesn’t give the orders; the alpha carries out the omega’s orders.”

He thought about that for a long minute, his thumb caressing her knuckles.

“That’s gonna take some getting used to,” he said finally. “What with my commanding officer having been an alpha and all. I miss that crotchety old bastard,” he added unexpectedly, his voice shaking on the words. “I just…I wish…” The words trailed off and he drew an unsteady breath, his hand vanishing to swipe at his eyes. “I never got a chance to say goodbye.”

Sombra turned to face him, the tears on his cheeks and his closed eyes not a surprise. Without hesitating, she pulled his head down to her shoulder and held him as he cried, murmuring reassurance and sympathy as, probably for the first time since news of the explosion rocked the world, he let himself mourn the man who had been like a father to him.

 

* * *

 

~Jesse~

He hadn’t been expecting to bawl his eyes out on the shoulder of a woman he’d met less than twelve hours ago for the express purpose of having sex and getting paid for it. But he also hadn’t expected to find himself in the fanciest damn place he’d ever seen, fancier than Ashe’s parents’ house, and treated like goddamn royalty. The idea of being desired but respected, of being hit on by explicitly _not_ being hit on, was something he’d never even thought of but _fuck_ if it didn’t make him feel like a million bucks. He knew Sombra had experience making omega men feel comfortable, but somehow that didn’t make any of her gestures come off as fake. She was being honest with him, letting him know that she _could_ be putting the moves on him but wasn’t because she cared and if anything happened, she wanted it to be genuine.

Reyes had been like that, never beating around the bush or feeding him bullshit, and as she sat there next to him on the floor, in the middle of the hall, he realized that he _wanted_ something to happen between them. He wanted this gorgeous, amazing woman to make courting gestures towards him. He wanted to live in her mansion, he wanted to find her late at night and distract her away from whatever she was doing, urge her to come to bed with him, to go to sleep with her in his arms and wake her up with kisses, to see her smile whenever she looked up and saw him.

He wanted to introduce her to his pseudo-dad and see Reyes smile, proud that his scruffy cowboy son had snagged himself such an amazing woman, happy that his orphaned omega had such a fierce and clever alpha to watch over him. But Reyes was dead, and Morrison too, and Amari, and he had no idea where Reinhardt was or which little mountain town the Lindholms lived in, and he knew Angela would be happy for him, but…

It wasn’t the same, and suddenly all the hurt that he’d been bottling up or drowning in cheap whiskey started leaking out of his eyes and he cried on Sombra’s shoulder, cried for the family that had been shattered and the home he’d lost and the father-figure he’d last seen while they were both pissed and saying things they knew they’d regret, only somehow they’d never managed to get a hold of each other to patch things up before shit hit the fan.

Jesse thought he’d feel weak and pathetic, crying on the shoulder of a pretty woman, but he didn’t. He felt protected.

He felt _loved_.

And when he’d cried himself out and dared to raise his eyes to meet hers, he found compassion and sympathy. She didn’t think he was weak or pathetic. She shared his grief. She was _there_ for him, whatever he wanted, whatever he needed, because she cared.

She was _family_.

They resumed the tour, walking slowly and talking softly, fingers tangling together in silence that spoke louder than words. Sombra told him about the scenarios she’d gotten requests for and the thoughts she’d had about enacting them. He told her they all sounded fine, and that it was a little weird for him to realize that he was going to be acting in the sort of porn he’d wanted to find but never could. She told him how she’d found out she was an alpha and turned a child porn operation into the lucrative high-quality production it now was.

Then, in the privacy of one of the camera-riddled bedroom sets, she pulled off her shirt and pants and showed him that she was covered in high-tech tattoos with nanite ink that was linked to her cranial augmentations and changed at her command. Her skin was a canvas full of hidden shapes and designs in every color of the rainbow, or plain black if that’s what she wanted, and he watched with awe and no small amount of appreciation as they bloomed and vanished back into her skin. Combine

d with an assortment of wigs and her face blurring out, the tattoos let her become a multitude of different women.

“Who all have the same body shape,” he pointed out, but she grinned.

“Between the nanites and the digital editing, I can change my dimensions and my skin tone. Dimensions is trickier, obviously,” she admitted as she pulled her pants back up over her enticing hips, “but there’s a lot of digital touching-up that happens before the final product is shipped out. Removing birthmarks and moles and stretch marks, editing body hair in or out…sometimes a co-star wants his skin tone changed. We leave the faces behind a classic blur that doesn’t even _pretend_ to be anything but what it is, and that fools people into not realizing that we’ve done more subtle edits.”

Jesse made a thoughtful sound. “I’d been wondering, on the trip, what my predecessors looked like.”

“All types,” Sombra answered, pulling her hair out of her shirt and grinning at him. “Tall and short, skinny and chunky, fit and flabby. Pale and freckled, bronze, olive, dark as a well-kept secret. I brought them in, made them feel comfortable, and they left on good terms. Some were married. Some were looking for excitement. Some were in bad places and needed the money. But none of them were anything to me but business partners.”

The insecurity that had nagged him vanished. Alphas were driven to perfect something they could lavish on an omega, he knew. Morrison had cooked. Reyes had sewn, and the serape folded carefully in his bag had been a treasured gift. Alphas perfected something they could use to show an omega that they would be a good mate. Sombra had skipped straight to perfecting the act of _being_ a good mate, and suddenly all the omegas that had come before him weren’t competition. They were _practice,_ tools, the means to an end, and that end was lavishing her skills on him.

“How soon d’you think we can film you deflowering me?” he asked, feeling an unfamiliar ache between his legs and realizing that he simultaneously wanted to penetrate and be penetrated.

“After breakfast tomorrow,” she answered firmly, her lips quirked into a teasing smile. “Both because it will take time to get the sets ready and prepare a green-screen glove for your arm, and because I want to make sure you’re rested and settled and not rushing into this. Give you a chance to sleep on it, make sure you’re really comfortable doing it.”

That surprised him, but only because he hadn’t realized he was, in fact, slightly apprehensive and trying to rush through it. “Thank you,” he said, the words startled, and she laughed.

“I’m very good at this, Mister Jesse,” she teased. “How about we have lunch, and then I’ll get started on preparing things and leave you to entertain yourself until dinner?”

Jesse smiled at her, enjoying the way her cheeks flushed slightly. “I think that sounds like a pretty good idea.”

 

* * *

 

Lunch was ordered off a menu, like the mansion had a fancy restaurant kitchen somewhere, and for all Jesse knew…it did. But fresh Mexican food was too tempting to pass up, and knowing how happy it would make Sombra to see him enjoying himself, he didn’t even try. He _did_ make sure to express how pleased he was with the food, the beer, and the company, and somehow it wasn’t a surprise when the chef turned out to be omnic. He thanked and complimented the chef, who had come to present dinner options, and opted for a simple spaghetti dinner.

“Not that I don’t think your prime rib or osso bucco wouldn’t be amazing,” he assured the omnic, “but I haven’t had food this good in so long that I need something simple to keep me grounded.”

The chef laughed. “I am flattered by your compliment,” xie said with a French accent that Jesse was certain was artificial. “I have studied many aspects of cuisine, and I am always delighted to expand my knowledge. Never be afraid to request exactly what you want, whether it is exotic or simple.”

Sombra excused herself to get the sets prepared, dropping a light kiss on his cheek as she left, and Jesse found the same little hovering droid waiting for him. At his command, it led him back to his room where he stepped into the bathroom and began disrobing.

He had never allowed himself a bath, much less a bubble bath or a bath bomb. Thought they were silly and girly, and they might be – but they were also an omega thing, and he was going to indulge himself because damn it, he’d had a long year and he _deserved_ some comfort.

 

* * *

 

~Sombra~

When Jesse strolled in for dinner, he was _more_ than relaxed. His eyes were half-lidded and she could smell jasmine and orange from halfway across the room. Faint lilac shimmers resolved into glitter on his hair and skin, and Sombra didn’t bother to hide her smile.

“Took advantage of the bathroom?” she asked, her voice warm and teasing, and he smirked as he sat down.

“Sure did. Never had a fancy bath before, and I wanted to try it. May have over-done it, though,” he said, examining his hands. The fingertips were wrinkled. “How’s the set coming?”

“Set’s ready. I just need to make that green-screen glove. Jesse…how do you feel?”

He blinked at her. “Good? _Really_ good. Relaxed and melty, almost like I got a really good buzz going on, but I didn’t drink anything. Almost came down in nothing but a silk robe. Why?”

“You’re saturated,” she told him gently. “You’ve indulged all your senses and you’re in a very receptive state right now. I’m telling you this so you know what’s going on, and to let you know that your body’s ready to consent to just about anything, which is exactly why we won’t be doing anything tonight.”

Jesse blinked slowly, his eyebrows drawing together as he worked his way through that. Sombra was glad she was wearing patches _and_ a suppressor ring, because her alpha instincts were screaming at her to seduce the omega who _clearly_ wanted it. She wasn’t just smelling the bath bomb and body wash; one of Jesse’s patches must have come loose, because she was smelling _him_. He was scenting, and it was absolutely _divine_ to smell him not just aroused but saturated. If she were to check his scent glands right now, she knew they would be open, waiting for her to lick and get locked in, marking him as mated to her.

“I appreciate that,” he said slowly as dinner was served. “I _do_ want to do all sorts of things with you, but I’ve been drunk enough to know when my judgment is questionable, and you’re right. So…thank you.”

Sombra smiled at him. “Eat. Sleep. We can get up to all kinds of things together in the morning.”

He toasted her with his fork. “Sounds like a plan.”

They ate in lazy, comfortable silence, Sombra keeping her eyes down as much as possible so Jesse didn’t see how much she wanted to climb into his lap, to grind against him in multiple places and alternate between peppering him with kisses and leaving hickeys all over his neck. When she did look up, it was with a smile that he returned, and she was able to tear her gaze away because while she wanted to be all over him as an alpha, as a woman she was flustered and blushing. When they were done, she excused herself and left another feather-light kiss on his cheek while he was asking the chef what desserts were in the fridge.

Thankfully, she had plenty of things to do to distract herself from the side of tender beef named Jesse McCree.

 

* * *

 

He was waiting for her when she strolled in for breakfast, an omelet and toast in front of him, and he smiled at her in a way that made it clear he was _more_ than just happy to see her. She returned the smile and filled her plate with hash browns and eggs and bacon, snagging a glass of juice and a mug of coffee for herself before sitting. Jesse was excited and eager to get shooting, which was a relief, and he seemed much more comfortable all around. But then again, getting saturated for the first time would go a very long way to convincing his omega instincts that he was not just safe, but _treasured_.

After breakfast, Sombra took him to see the sets: the hard-light bar where she’d buy him a few drinks and sit on his lap and flirt; the street outside her supposed apartment building where she’d invite him up to star in her amateur porn shoot; the bedroom with black-draped walls and a camera on a tripod, a single mattress covered in purple silk for the bed.

“The bedroom is real,” she assured him. “Even the camera. Both of us are going to be _way_ too busy to remember what’s real and what’s not. So…” Sombra grinned at him. “What do you want to be wearing when you get seduced, Mister Jesse?”

He grinned at her. “I think the real question is…what are you going to be wearing when you seduce me, Miss Sombra?”

She laughed. “And spoil the mystery?”

“Wicked woman,” he chided teasingly. “You gonna tell me which tattoos you’ll have?”

“Depends,” she teased back. “Which ones you want, cowboy?”

“Well, that ain’t a fair question when I don’t remember them all, now is it?”

Somehow, they’d ended up face to face, with his hands on her shoulders and hers on his chest. As soon as she realized it, so did he, and they both blushed – but neither of them made an attempt to move.

A breathless eternity later, Sombra said, “Why don’t we both go take off our patches, get changed into our seduction clothes, and meet back here to start the shoot?”

“The bar scene?” Jesse asked, sounding just as breathless. “Or could we just…start with the amateur porn shoot? It’s a bit early for drinking.”

“I’ll substitute apple juice,” she promised, and got a nod in agreement.

They fled for their rooms.

 

* * *

 

Twenty minutes later, in tight black stretch pants and an oversized purple top that slid tantalizingly down one shoulder to reveal a lacy bra strap, the three-inch heels of her knee-high boots clicking on the floor, Sombra strode into the dimly-lit bar set to discover Jesse McCree in a red silk button-up, perched on a bar stool and showing off the _fine_ curves of his legs with black denim and boots that somehow evoked the Old West without actually being cowboy boots. He was facing away from the door, toying with an empty glass as if he’d been nursing a drink, and she nodded to AK-T0R – who was lurking behind the bar, pretending to wipe the counter with a rag – before starting the cameras with a gesture.

_Click. Click. Click._ Hips swaying, Sombra sauntered up to the bar and waved for the bartender. “Whiskey, neat,” she said shortly, taking her glass and leaning against the bar, glancing around as she sipped apple juice.

Her eyes alighted on the figure of Jesse, still oblivious. She gestured the bartender closer.

“Another round for him, on my tab.”

“Of course,” AK-T0R murmured.

Jesse looked up, startled, as a glass slid over to him. His eyes met hers and she toasted him, nodding to confirm she’d just bought him a drink. Slowly, he picked up the glass and toasted her back before sipping.

Sombra sat on a barstool two down from him and crossed her legs. “You here by yourself?” she asked. “Or are you just the first one to the party?”

“It’s just me,” he muttered, looking into his glass.

“Does that mean you’re looking for a good time?”

Now he looked up, eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “What are you suggesting?”

She leaned over, ‘accidentally’ giving him a view of her cleavage. “You’re a handsome stud, you ever thought about being a porn star?”

“Can’t say I have,” Jesse answered, gaze buried between her breasts.

The bright scent of oranges wafted across her nose, eliciting her almond-cocoa scent in return. “I have a studio,” she announced, trying to sound brassy instead of breathless. “Just a little one, but it’s special. I’ve been looking for the right guy to star with me.”

Jesse tore his eyes away and drained his glass. “What makes you think that’s me?” he asked sourly.

A nod to the bartender, who poured more amber liquid into Jesse’s glass, and Sombra slid off her stool to circle around and run her hands up Jesse’s back. “You’re an omega,” she said throatily, going up on tiptoe for a gratuitous sniff at the back of his neck.

“What about it?” was his sharp retort.

“Don’t be like that, hot stuff,” she wheedled. “I’m an alpha. We were _made_ for each other.”

“…never been with an alpha,” muttered Jesse, gaze buried in his glass again.

Another sniff and a groan that wasn’t faked, and Sombra slipped around to lift his chin with on finger and smile at him. “Come with me. Let me show you what you’ve been missing.”

Jesse looked her up and down, noting the shape of her alpha erection at the front of her pants and letting his legs spread to show off the bulge between them. “Alright,” he said slowly.

Eyelashes fluttering, she smiled at him. “You won’t regret it. Follow me,” she said, taking his hand and leading him off the set.

They strode over to the ‘street’ set, and immediately Sombra pulled Jesse against her, leaning against the wall. He got the hint and ground against her, kissing her jaw and the side of her neck while she ran her hands down his back and cupped his ass. Then she rolled them and pressed him against the wall, grinding against his thigh while she pulled him down for a proper kiss. They were both moaning when they came up for air, and impatiently she grabbed his hand again and tugged him away, both of them eager to get to the bedroom set.

 

* * *

 

~Jesse~

They stumbled into the bedroom set like every stereotypical horny couple in every movie in history, lips catching and breaking apart and hungrily seeking again, hands roaming over shoulders and hips and blindly fumbling with buttons and hems, pinning each other to the black-draped walls and grinding for a breath or two before moving again. Somehow, they got Jesse’s shirt open and Sombra pulled hers over her head before pushing him gently down onto the single mattress laying on the wood floor – incongruously covered in a purple silk sheet – and turning on the video camera mounted on a tripod. He’d just fumbled his fly open when she joined him, kneeling on the mattress to gently push his hands away and free his aching erection.

He wasn’t expecting her to kiss the head.

He _really_ wasn’t expecting her to start going down on him.

For the next few minutes, she hummed and sucked and stroked and he did his best to not do the uncouth thing and grab her hair, grab her head and urge her further down. He tugged at his own hair, grateful for the long glove the thespian omnic had helped him put on before Sombra’s arrival at the bar set, and made no attempt to keep his appreciation quiet.

When he felt his climax approach, he did his best to warn her and then surrendered to the glory of orgasm. It wasn’t his first blowjob, exactly, nor was it the most skilled mouth he’d ever felt. But there was a world of difference between skill without passion and getting your dick sucked by a woman who was just as thirsty for you as you were for her.

Hands tugged at his pants and he lifted his hips, remembering as the draft tickled him that he had more to hide than just nuts. But those warm hands pressed his hips down, urged his legs apart, and then Sombra began _licking his omega orifice,_ and he hadn’t known until that moment that he could want something so much.

“Holy hell,” he groaned, trying to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. “Is _that_ what it feels like when a lady gets eaten out? _Shit,_ missy, I don’t care if this was a plot t’ steal my kidneys, y’all can have ‘em if you just keep doing that.”

Between his legs, Sombra chuckled. “Just warning you up for the real show,” she teased, caressing his thighs.

“I’m warm,” he panted, levering himself up onto his elbows to catch her eyes and getting stuck between her breasts instead. “I’m _plenty_ warm and I have never wanted anything as much as I want to find out what it’s like to have a gorgeous alpha inside me.”

For one breath, Sombra looked pleasantly surprised. Then she grinned and stood, swaying and caressing her own skin, giving him an impromptu striptease as she removed her bra and pushed her stretch pants down to kick them off. Her panties were black lace boy shorts that struggled to restrain the shape of her alpha cock, teasing him with its contours rather than showing them off, and when she slipped her thumbs under the waistband to tug it down, his breath caught.

It was long, longer than he thought was physically possible considering the little nub it would have grown out of, and thick enough that it should have made him feel inadequate or apprehensive but all he felt was….eager. The head was pointed, relieving a fear he hadn’t realized he’d harbored about the difficulty of something sliding into that orifice, and looked from below almost like a spade. Little nubs marched up the sides, making him shiver at the thought of how they would feel going in, and the whole thing was a dark, almost shimmery red. It didn’t look like a regular dick – hell, it didn’t even look human, like it belonged on a sexy she-devil, and when he found himself smiling, he realized that all his recoiling away from someone fucking his hole was recoiling away from a regular ol’ cock. He wasn’t attracted to human cocks. Wanted nothing to do with them except for his own. But this?

He _wanted_ this.

“I wanna say something witty,” he breathed, eyes locked on that scarlet wonder, “but all I can think of is _GET IN MAH BELLEH_ and that ain’t even biologically correct so…”

Sombra laughed, kicking the lacy panties off to the side and somehow going from standing up on full display to crawling seductively up over his legs without him seeing how she did it. But he didn’t really care, not when she was kissing him, pushing him gently onto his back and her breasts were in his hands, soft and warm and her nipples under his thumbs making her moan into his mouth.

“You want this?” she teased breathily, the tip of her alpha cock brushing the insides of his thighs.

“More’n I have ever wanted anything,” he gasped, eyes closed. “I’m beggin’, missy. Fuck me.”

Another kiss, hot and intoxicating, was his reward and he could feel her moving. Then-

Sliding. Gentle and smooth, bumpy and thick and he panted and cried out as she filled him, feeling like the other side of every time he’d slid into a tight, wet pussy, and he twitched and clenched around her like he didn’t even known his body could do. She kissed him again, gently, his lips flailing vaguely against hers as he struggled to make sense of the things his body was feeling.

“You’re so warm,” she was murmuring against his skin. “So tight. So wet. _Dios mio_ , you feel so good. You still want it, stud? You want me to fuck your tight, wet, omega hole?”

“Please,” he groaned, eyes rolling into the back of his head as his hips bucked on their own, making those nubs grind against his walls and sending waves of pleasure through him.

“Alright.”

One last, slow kiss and she shifted, bracing herself and making him moan as every tiny motion felt like heaven. Then she started thrusting, and he lost all sense of self. There was no him, no her, no bedroom set with its camera on a tripod. There was only pleasure, sensations he had no words for, and he was floating on a sea of _yes_ until suddenly everything went tight and then the world exploded in pleasure that made his earlier orgasm feel like nothing.

As he lay there, aware of a warm body pressed against his, struggling to pull his mind back from the glimpse of eternity he’d witnessed with his first omega orgasm, one thought floated into his mind: everything had been worth it. All the pain and suffering of his childhood, all the awkwardness of being a male omega and trying to deny what he was, even the loss of the past year – everything in his life had been to bring him here, to Sombra’s arms, and this was where he was meant to be. This was where he would stay. They’d only met two days ago, but it didn’t matter. They were meant to be together, lovers and mates, and he was finally _home_.

 

* * *

 

~Sombra~

It was kind of amazing, Sombra thought, the difference _love_ made. She’d thought that with all her experience, sex with Jesse would be more of the same. A _little_ better, maybe, but not _catastrophically_ better.

“You ruined me,” she murmured after she’d waved the cameras off and her co-star had recovered enough for words. Jesse made an inquisitive sound, and she levered herself up to kiss him. “That was… _beyond_ good. That was _amazing_ and I don’t know if I can ever fuck another omega again.”

He groaned. “Is it okay if I say I don’t _want_ you fucking another omega ever again?” His brown eyes were still unfocused, but they caught her and dragged her down to see the golden flecks floating in them.

“Yes,” she breathed. “I’m yours, Jesse McCree. If you want me.”

“Oh, I want you.” Shakily, he laughed. “But I’m gonna need some time to recover from the best experience of my goddamned life before I can do anything about it.”

“Take your time,” she teased, settling back into his firm, warm embrace. “We have the rest of our lives to do everything you want, cowboy.”

 

* * *

 

Half an hour later they were turning the cameras back on and she was the one on her back, legs spread and slightly nervous as he kissed her.

“I’ll go slow,” he promised, kissing her breasts. “I don’t know that I’ll be as good as you, but I like to think I’m better than just okay.”

“Quit stalling,” she growled insincerely, and he smiled at her.

“Alright, missy. Just hold yer horses.”

Agonizingly slow, he kissed a trail from her breasts down to her mound and then-! Then, the tip of his tongue was sliding between her folds, warm and probing and electric on her clit. His breath puffed against her as he settled in and began doing _things_ , lapping and swirling and sucking gently and everything felt _amazing_ and she was making a range of sounds she’d never thought would ever leave her mouth but she wanted more, _more_ , MORE!

Then she shivered as orange hit her nostrils and her clit expanded into her alpha cock, but Jesse didn’t even slow down. He kept licking, over her nubs and up her shaft to take her spade-tipped head into his mouth and suck, warm fingers wrapped around her shaft, gripping her firmly and making her cry out as the nubs pressed and her fingers grabbed fistfuls of the purple sheet, hips bucking into that strange but welcoming wet warmth.

“I’m…I’m gonna…”

Sombra couldn’t find the wits to finish her warning, but it didn’t matter. She came, fountaining empty fluid that Jesse sucked down and swallowed, fingers gently probing her opening as she sighed in bliss, her cock shrinking back down into an oversized clit.

“Ready?” he asked softly, and she groaned.

“You’ve got ten minutes before I can get it up again,” she told him lazily.

His body shifted on the mattress, covering hers lightly, his lips teasing hers. “If I can’t have you screaming in half that, I’ll eat my hat.”

It took a minute before Sombra realized why that sounded wrong. “You weren’t wearing a hat,” she protested, frowning. Then she gasped as his regular human cock slid inside her, making her twitch and clench.

“That’s right,” he chuckled, breath tickling her ear as he pushed deeper. “Let me just…”

The angle of his thrust shifted, his dick stroking something that felt _good_ , better than good, and he chuckled again as she gasped.

The G-spot. It _did_ exist.

Well. Not that she’d really doubted biology, but she’d tried finding it on her own and never managed to hit the bundle of nerves he was now massaging with the head of his penis.

He knew what he was doing, that was certain. She almost couldn’t pay attention to anything else he was doing as he thrust carefully, little grunts escaping as she tightened her hold on him, and when had she wrapped arms and legs around his body? Then her breath caught as she felt an orgasm building, rising like the crest of a giant wave, and then it crashed down onto her and she screamed. Jesse groaned and thrust harder, faster, bellowing as he came inside her and then rolling with her in his arms so they could lay together, side by side, drifting on afterglow.

“That was amazing,” she murmured a short eternity later, and he kissed her.

“ _You’re_ amazing,” he countered. “That was really your first time?”

“As a woman,” she said softly.

“Mmm. Well, fair’s fair, right?”

Sombra laughed. “Shut up and kiss me.”

He kissed her.

 

* * *

 

~Jesse~

If you’d asked him, six months ago, what he thought he’d be doing half a year later, he would have told you the same as now: drinking in a shitty motel and reflecting on the wreck his life had become. Never in a million years would he have ever thought he’d be living in a mansion, mated to a beautiful alpha woman, and now…

Sombra looked up from the medical scanner, her face split into a beaming smile, and there were _tears_ in the corners of her eyes.

Jesse’s breath caught. “Are we…?”

She kissed him. “We are,” she breathed. “We’re going to be parents, Jesse!”

Awe washed over him and blindly, he clung to his mate. “We’re going to be parents,” he repeated in a daze. “We really did it. You got me knocked up, and now…”

“And now I’m realizing I have no idea how to make sure you’re healthy for your pregnancy,” Sombra said shakily. “This is unacceptable. I have to protect you. I need to find someone who knows about omega pregnancy and is trustworthy.”

Jesse cleared his throat to cover the knot that had choked him. “I may know someone,” he said. “I just haven’t talked to her since…”

“Since the explosion?”

“Yeah.”

Sombra freed herself from his arms and took his head firmly between her hands to kiss the worry off his face. “Tell me where to find her, _mi amor_. We’ll go together.”

“Switzerland,” he said shakily. “Pack our bags, pumkin. We’re going to Europe.”

Her gorgeous purple eyes widened. “Angela? But she’s not…”

“She’s an omega,” Jesse said firmly. “And she’s been studying omega biology on the side her whole life. And…”

“She’s family,” Sombra finished for him. “Alright, stud. Let’s get packed and find a flight. We’re going first class, of course.”

Jesse laughed. “Of course. Only the best for your mate, right?”

“Darn tootin’, cowboy,” she teased.

 

* * *

 

The house – chateau? – was bigger than Jesse had expected, but he’d never actually been to Angela’s private residence. Sombra’d had to track down the address. Now they stood there, on the porch, bags in their hands and hearts in their throats.

Jesse rang the bell.

In anxious silence he counted his thudding heartbeats until-

“Jesse?” The security on the door disarmed and Angela flung the door open to launch herself into his arms. “Jesse! _Mein Gott_ , it has been years! Where have you been, what have you been doing?”

“Getting knocked up,” he laughed, breathing in the scent of her hair, something in his heart going from tight to loose as the familiar scent of _family_ sank in. “Angela, this is my mate Sombra.”

“Mate…” The slim woman he thought of as a sister or a young aunt stepped back to examine her. “Thank you for making him happy and taking care of him,” she told Sombra softly. “I have been worried for him.”

Sombra flashed her a smile. “You and me both, _amiga_ ,” she replied. “But I don’t know how to take care of him as a pregnant omega. So we came to you.”

Angela nodded. “How far?”

“Six weeks,” Jesse said in a tone of quiet awe. He still had trouble believing that he was _actually pregnant_. “As soon as we knew, we realized we didn’t know what to do next.”

“You’ll stay with me, of course.” Angela tugged them both inside the house and shut the door. “There’s plenty of room in the spare bedroom. Have you…” Her voice trailed off. “Have you…spoken to anyone else, since…”

Jesse shook his head, throat tight.

“Then I will not tell Ana,” she continued primly. “I will let it be a surprise.”

Jesse frowned. “Angela, Ana is…”

“Alive,” she interrupted crisply. “We have been secretly in contact since the accident that nearly killed her. Right now, she is tracking the whereabouts of Jack Morrison.”

A tug on his bionic arm – the one that was nearly indistinguishable from a real arm – turned out to be Sombra urging him to sit down. “You’re looking pale,” she said quietly.

He didn’t protest. He _felt_ pale.

“You know that I was able to help Jack and Gabriel defy biology and become mates,” Angela was saying, her voice sounding distant over the roaring in his ears. “The way I was able to accomplish that feat…”

She tugged the hem of her shirt up, exposing tattoos of two red roses over her scent glands. Jesse frowned, not understanding why that was significant, but Sombra gasped and went to one knee to examine them.

“Nanite ink,” she said, less of a question and more an explanation. “As long as the mating bond is intact, the color stays bright. You’re mated to both of them,” she said, standing to look the blonde in the eyes.

Angela nodded. “I am mated to both of them, and with their other gland, they mated to each other.”

“That means…” Jesse swallowed, the lump in his throat too thick to let words pass.

“That means,” Sombra said in a solemn tone, “that they are both _still alive._ ”

 


	3. Recall and reunion

~Reaper~

He had always been Reaper.

That’s what they told him, anyhow. He couldn’t remember for himself. An accident, they said. An attempt at enhancing his reflexes that went horribly wrong. He was a mercenary, a soldier, Talon’s secret weapon. He’d left his name and past behind and was known only as Reaper because he left nothing but death in his wake.

It felt appropriate to him as he swirled around his airtight cell – not that he was a prisoner, but his body was still…powdery. Grainy. It was hard to hold himself together, to pull himself together, and air currents were _not_ his friend. They’d left the vent open once and he’d woken up spread halfway across the floor and had a panic attack. So he had a Plexiglas cell that closed and sealed, where he could eddy and drift and feel _secure_. And it was comforting, knowing that he had not always been this way. That he would not always _remain_ in this state. He had an identity to get back to, a job to get back to, once he had mastered the trick of making his body stay as a body.

Later, much later, when he had quarters and agents and missions, he thought about how little they’d actually told him. What had he liked? What was his favorite food, his favorite color? What music did he despise? What clothes did he wear?

Why did his quarters feel brand new, as if they had never been lived in?

He still couldn’t remember anything before the accident. He remembered the accident itself, a little – reaching out to touch a panel that was beeping, and a black tar exploding in his face.

If he had left his name and past behind to be known only as Reaper, then why was there a gold band on his ring finger in that memory? Who had he loved, who had he _married_ , who had he left behind? Why did they not mention his spouse?

He started to suspect they were not being completely honest with him. That he had been _someone else_ , before the accident. Maybe it was an honest mistake and they truly thought he was their Reaper.

Maybe he had never been Reaper.

It was a hard thing, not knowing if anyone could be trusted – himself included. For the most part, he just kept his mouth shut and followed orders. But secretly, he began to explore. Listening to music. Thinking about colors. Eating foods. Searching for the right sight, sound, smell, taste to trigger a memory, a loose thread he could tug to unravel the mystery of who he was.

Nothing worked.

 

* * *

 

He solidified behind the intruder, eyes registering the jacket with 76 emblazoned on the back while his ears belatedly informed his brain that a voice had demanded ‘where is he?’ in a growl. His hand was already aimed at the back of the man’s head, his finger tightening on the trigger as the words ‘right here’ escaped his mouth, followed unexpectedly by the name Jack.

Time slowed to a crawl.

Their 20th anniversary, the vulnerable awe on Jack’s face when he opened the box and saw the perfect replica of the jacket he’d wanted as a child, fingers trembling as his breath caught and tears pooled in his beautiful blue eyes.

The preacher in the little Indiana church saying “And do you, Jack Morrison, take Gabriel Reyes to be your lawfully wedded husband?” and Jack gazing at him like he was the archangel he’d been named after for a moment that seemed like an eternity before breathing, “I do.”

Jack carrying him over the threshold of the little cabin – isolated but crammed full of solar-powered comforts – they’d spent both of their Crisis bonuses purchasing, including construction and installation and enough land to ensure no one would be around to bother them.

The memories popped like a bubble, leaving him milliseconds away from blowing his husband’s brains out, and he only had time to lower the shotgun before it went off, catching Jack in the hip.

He knew who he was. More than that, he knew how much he had to lose if Talon even _suspected_ he remembered anything, so he started talking out of his ass. Acting like a mercenary faced with a target who’d escaped death while praying that his husband didn’t recognize him or didn’t blow his cover, suddenly aware that he had no idea if his voice even _sounded_ like his voice.

Something striking his shoulder interrupted him, followed by a voice shouting for Jack to “Get in there!”

As memories of Ana exploded behind his eyes – Ana, and Fareeha, little Fareeha being picked up by Reinhardt and spun around like an airplane – he found himself on his back while his husband rained blows down on his mask. Belatedly, he threw a punch back and then booked it for where Ana had to be, utilizing his not-so-solid body to get up there.

She tried to shoot him, but the dart got stuck in his armor and he pulled it out with a dry huff of amusement.

More talking out his ass ensued, and she tackled him off their perch and onto the ground, ripping off his mask to recoil from the seething blackness beneath it as his body struggled to maintain a solid shape in the aftermath of a 30-foot drop. Then she said the words that left him feeling hollow and horrified: What happened to you?

How do you tell one of your oldest friends that you _don’t know?_ That you barely know who she is, who _you_ are, and you have no answer for her?

He threw vague accusations and fled.

 

* * *

 

~Jesse~

Jesse had been living in Angela’s Zurich residence with her for two months now, and while he still missed Sombra a surprising amount, what was more surprising was how comfortable he was in the doc’s home. But then again, she was an omega and she’d spent something like fifteen years getting it set up as her get-away nest. He still apologized to her about once a week for not talking to her about omega stuff, and she still smiled and told him that the only one he’d hurt was himself. His pregnancy was progressing splendidly, to his relief, and when he got the rare chance to talk to his mate, he passed that along.

Sombra was undercover in a sense, infiltrating Talon and searching for the man who’d been both of their role models. Turns out Reyes wasn’t dead, and that hadn’t been as much of a shock as it had been to learn that Reyes and Morrison were mates with each other and with Angela in the most secret alpha-omega sandwich in history.

There was a part of him that was almost envious – having _two_ alphas to dote on her? – but he was content with the most amazing surprise to have ever walked into his life.

It was a quiet evening, him reading the news and Angela doing work on her pad, both of them sitting within touching distance on the impressively huge couch that ran the length of the living room. The vehicle that pulled into the driveway made him look up and the door opening made him raise an eyebrow, but it was the second door opening that really got his attention and then the front door opened and Soldier 76 – Jack Morrison – stomped in, jacket and tactical visor and all. He made a beeline for Angela and crammed himself onto the couch between them, kneeling on the cushion (so his boots didn’t get the couch dirty) and fumbling the visor off to press his face into the side of her neck and wrap his arms around her without saying a word.

He almost didn’t see Ana follow him in and close the door. She knelt to awkwardly unlace Jack’s boots and tug them off before giving Jesse an eye-roll and a dry smile. Then she lifted the hem of her shirt and…peeled scent-blocking patches off?

The subtle, comforting, almost-mom scent of her changed slightly, and he realized that she, too, was an omega. Then she curled up on his other side like a mother holding her adult child, and he relaxed into the physical touch.

“Jesse McCree,” she said, her voice almost too warm to be chiding, “are you pregnant?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled smugly.

She sucked in a breath. “You’re mated?”

He hadn’t known that he wasn’t immediately fertile, and that Sombra’s alpha dick would only shoot blanks until their bodies had been reassured that they were good mates to each other, but she’d taught him more about his body than he thought anyone ever could. He supposed it only made sense that Ana, who’d managed to hide her type all this time, would know that if he was pregnant, that meant he had a mate.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, discovering that somehow his head had wound up nestled against her chest. “Her name is- well, I don’t rightly know her real name, but she don’t use it anymore anyhow. She goes by Sombra. Spicy little Latina with a mansion down outside of Dorado. Seduced me into a life of luxury,” he adds cheerfully. “Never thought I’d be the settling-down type, much less the one havin’ kids, but we talked about it and I found out I wanted it, so we’re doin’ it.”

“She’s undercover in Talon,” Angela said quietly from the other side of the couch, fingers moving through Jack’s hair. “Trying to find Gabriel.”

“We found him,” Ana said shortly, arms tightening around Jesse as Jack stiffened on his other side. “Talon’s assassin, Reaper.”

Jesse went still. Sombra hadn’t mentioned that, just that he- “He doesn’t remember anything,” he blurted. “Something happened to him, scrambled his brain. Sombra found the reports. He doesn’t know who he is, who anyone is. It’s not his fault.”

He didn’t bother specifying what wasn’t Gabriel’s fault – Reaper had a long and bloody track record.

They went to bed early that night, and although none of them discussed it, they all piled into Angela’s enormous bed. She managed to wrestle the jacket off her mate with soft kisses and softer words, but he barely responded and refused to take his face away from her skin. Ana helped her remove her bra, but she had to settle for sleeping in her clothes with Jack in a tank top and jeans. In solidarity, Ana removed her bra but remained clothed otherwise, and Jesse slipped off to his room to change into the soft flannel that reassured him so much before returning to snuggle up to Ana’s other side, thankful that while he looked a bit pudgy, he hadn’t begun to show enough to make it awkward.

 

* * *

 

~Jack~

Jack woke up to the mingled scents of not one, not two, but _three_ omegas that all smelled like family. Angela, of course, his omega mate. He hadn’t taken his nose away from her skin all night and barely remembered anything past seeing her through the sharp outlines of the visor. It had taken everything he had to not cry. It was like he’d found his husband and lost him in the same instant, hearing Gabriel’s voice, but the things he’d said…

None of it made any sense. He’d used Jack’s name, but he clearly didn’t know who Jack was – or, at least, what they meant to each other. Ana had followed him back to his hideout, helped him pack his few things and taken him back to her hideout where he’d tried to drown himself in a bottle and almost succeeded. Then he’d woken up in the back of her vehicle, both their guns in the trunk, halfway through Spain. She hadn’t let him out of the car for any reason (“There’s an empty bottle back there if you need it.”) until they’d pulled up to what he knew was Angela’s little house even before she said so. In sullen revenge, he hadn’t said a word to her after the bottle comment. But Angela…

It had been long, horrible years on his own, not knowing if his husband was alive or dead but probably dead, guilt and grief and raw, ugly rage turning him into someone he didn’t want his other mate to see. He wasn’t proud of having avoided her all this time, but that wasn’t what kept him from meeting her eyes. When everything went down…well, he wasn’t sure exactly what had caused the damage. There were at least three explosions and two separate occasions of blunt force trauma to his head, but the long and short of it was that his sight…went downhill. It was just one eye first, but the other followed within a month and then the tactical visor was the only thing keeping him from being functionally blind.

He hadn’t mentioned it to Ana. Too busy trying to process that Gabe had shot him.

Ana…that was _Ana_ he was smelling, the second omega. This was the first time he’d scented her, and it was infuriatingly soothing to have one of his oldest friends peel her patches off and comfort him in his hour of need. But at the same time it was…humbling…to realize that he was so much of a wreck that she was letting him scent her. Everything they’d been through, and only now did she think he needed the comfort.

He couldn’t even be angry that she was right; being smothered in the scents of _three_ omegas who were all ‘family’ – and one of them was pregnant at that – was soothing his alpha instincts into submission.

Wait…who was pregnant? It wasn’t Ana, it wasn’t Angela…who was the third omega? Carefully, Jack rolled over and sniffed, ignoring Ana’s chest to nuzzle at the arm flung over her. That was…

…that was Jesse McCree. Jack knew he was an omega, had known before he’d even met the kid back when he _was_ a kid, but with what Gabe had told him it hadn’t been a surprise that he went straight for suppressor implants. What had happened to make him open up enough that he was mated and pregnant?

That was a question for another time. Angela was leaving the bed and suddenly, Jack’s skin itched with how badly he wanted a shower. The hot water, the familiar scents of Angela’s shampoo and body wash, and most importantly, the ambient sound that would muffle the crying he was pretty damn certain he was going to do.

Jack climbed out of bed and followed his omega mate to the bathroom, eyes closed to excuse his blindness.

 

* * *

 

~Ana~

Ana was sitting in a comfortable armchair, legs tucked underneath her and a mug of tea warming her hands, chatting with Jesse. He’d told her how he’d lost his arm, something she hadn’t believed until he popped it out of its socket and back in. His mate had taken offense to the clunky nature of his prosthetic and made – or bought – him a couple more-advanced arms instead. In return, she was telling Jesse in a quiet voice about how she lost her eye (and accidentally faked her death) when the shower stopped.

A minute or two later, Jack walked in wearing a fluffy, sky-blue bathrobe, his hair damp and ruffled. He didn’t meet her eyes or Jesse’s as he walked over to the couch.

“I’m going to lay down with my head in your lap,” he said gruffly. “If that’s okay. You’re pregnant, and I need to smell those soothing hormones for a bit.”

Jesse threw her a panicked look for the space of a heartbeat, but nodded. “Sure, Jack. Whatever you need.”

The big alpha wasted no time curling into a surprisingly tight ball of fluffy blue terrycloth with his cheek on Jesse’s thigh and his nose practically buried in the omega’s hip. Almost immediately, he relaxed with a strangled groan while Jesse, looking like he couldn’t believe what he was doing, moved one hand to start stroking the older man’s fading hair.

“Alphas defend their families by seeing to the needs of their loved ones,” Ana said softly. “Omegas defend their families by taking out threats directly.”

Jesse snorted. “The best defense is a good offense, huh?”

“Something like that,” she admitted with a smile. “And it looks like you’ve just learned that the most fearsome omega is one bearing young. Jack knows this. He knows what you can do in a fight, and what I can do, and he knows that the two of us would take out an army to keep him safe.”

“To say nothing of Angela,” Jesse added with a grin. “I know what I’d do to keep my pumpkin safe, and we’ve only been mated about a year and a half.”

“Tell me about her,” Ana urged, sipping her tea. “How did you meet?”

The cowboy chuckled ruefully. “Would you believe we met on a porn set?”

Ana choked on her tea. “You’re joking.”

“Nope. Apparently, there’s a lot of super-rich folks who’ll pay a bundle to see a female alpha and a male omega going at it.” There wasn’t a shred of shame in Jesse’s voice. “It may not be entirely on the up-and-up, but my pumpkin’s legitimately rich. She’d never been with a man as a woman, and she let me do some things to her on camera that brought in a whole bunch more money…apparently, none of her other co-stars wanted to get involved past the ten penetration scenes, or she didn’t want to let them touch her that way, but she’d kinda had a thing for me as a teen and, well…”

He looked so chuffed that Ana couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I’m just glad to see you so happy,” she told him. “With luck, I will be able to meet her before too long.”

“I hope so.” Jesse glanced down, either at his slight baby bump or the alpha nuzzling his scent gland or both. “I wanna see Gabe again,” he said quietly. “I wanna show him that the dirty little orphan he took in is gonna have a family of his own, thanks to him putting up with me and giving me a chance.”

“We will get him back,” Angela said firmly from the door, making them all jump. “Tell me every detail of your encounter with him. There may be a clue in his actions.”

Ana took a deep breath as Jack curled tighter into himself. “I first knew it was him when Jack shouted ‘where is he?’ at a hapless guard and a figure appeared behind him and growled ‘right here, Jack’. His voice-”

“Stop.” Angela stepped into the room and sat in a chair close to Ana’s, leaning in to pin the other woman with an intense look. “What was Jack wearing?”

“I-”

“How did Gabriel recognize him?”

“The visor,” Ana answered in surprise. “He was wearing the visor and the jacket. I…I suppose he recognized Jack’s voice.”

“He gave me the jacket,” came a muffled voice from around Jesse’s hip. “Our wedding anniversary.”

The three omegas exchanged wide-eyed glances.

“Tell me what he said,” Angela demanded. “Every word.”

Slowly, they told her. She agreed that it made no sense, and seemed frustrated, but Jesse cleared his throat.

“It makes perfect sense,” he said, his tone just as firm as Angela’s had been. “Part of Blackwatch training was how to keep your cover if you get caught. He wasn’t talking to you two; he was talking to anyone from Talon that might be listening.”

Jack growled and sat up. “It does make sense,” he said grudgingly. “Say things that will convince Talon that he doesn’t remember who he is, and trust that we’d realize that’s what he was doing. He knows we didn’t leave you to die.”

“But Talon does not,” she said slowly. “Red herrings, to lead them away from the truth.”

“And we fell for it.” Jack grimaced.

Angela crossed the space between them to lift his face in her hands and kiss him fiercely. “By doing so, you may have helped him maintain the illusion that he does not remember who he is. He trusted you to play a part, and you played it. Now the question is: how do we steal him away from Talon before they can suspect him?”

“Information,” Jesse exclaimed, snapping his fingers.

“I’m not sure I follow that,” Angela said apologetically.

He leaned back as she sat next to Jack and grinned at them both. “The biggest haul Sombra makes with her videos isn’t the money people will pay for them – it’s knowing _who_ will pay for them. Who’s got that much money to blow on porn? Where do they live, how do they pay, what other vices do they have? Are they arrogant enough to take a small risk and download an unsecured file to get what they want and potentially invite a Trojan horse into their personal systems? The bigger they are…”

“The harder they fall,” Jack finished grimly, leaning back into his mate’s embrace. “So what information does Talon want badly enough to overlook the risk and grab it?”

“You,” Ana said dryly. “No – not just you. Us. Overwatch.”

“A database of former Overwatch members,” Angela breathed.

“And their loved ones,” Jesse added. “If you can’t take your target out directly, sometimes you can come at ‘em from the side.”

Jack growled under his breath. “So now that we know what bait to use…”

Angela kissed the top of his head, arms around his terrycloth-wrapped chest. “Now we can construct a trap. But first, breakfast.”

They all chuckled at that, but the tension had left the room. They had a plan, now.

They would get Gabriel back.

 

* * *

 

~Reaper~

As the drop ship lifted off from Hakim’s compound on its pre-programmed course back to base, Reaper-

No. He knew who he was, now. His name was Gabriel.

…but he didn’t remember who Gabriel had _been_ before the accident, except married to a man named Jack Morrison and friends with Reinhardt and Ana and a sort of uncle to Fareeha. He had fought in the Crisis – they all had? – but he couldn’t remember in what capacity.

It was frustrating.

Here he was, alone, with a ship. He could change course and no one could stop him…

…but they would send forces after him the instant he did, and he didn’t have a fucking clue where to even go. Did he have friends? Allies? If he landed at a police station somewhere, were there warrants for his arrest even without the mask? He just didn’t know enough yet.

Gabriel clung to that ‘yet’.

No… _not_ Gabriel. If he thought of himself as Gabriel, he would slip and get himself killed. Now that he knew he had a husband, he couldn’t risk that. He had to bury Gabriel and be Reaper until he had an opportunity to escape. He had to stay safe.

For Jack.

Reaper glared at the ship’s controls as it flew, clawing at the handful of memories he had, struggling to remember more. He could remember Jack’s shoulders, wet from a shower. The way his eyes crinkled when he laughed. The freckles that dusted his cheeks after too much time in the sun. But he couldn’t remember what they did for a living, where they had met, which of them had proposed.

When the ship docked, Sombra was there waiting. He still had no idea why she had come to Talon, or who had decided to stick him with her, but she grated on him for more than just the fact that she always had an aura of knowing something he didn’t. Her smug little smirk, her vague and coy comments, the way she always seemed to be laughing at him behind her eyes.

Her flawless Latina complexion.

He stalked off the ship without acknowledging her, forcing her to hurry and catch up as he crossed the hangar. The questions she fired at him got only grunts in response as she followed him down hallways and corridors, other agents leaping out of his way because they knew from experience that if they did not, he would shoot them and then walk over their bodies, still-living or otherwise. When the doors of his quarters closed behind him, it was a tangible relief.

There were cameras in his room, he was certain. It just made sense. Whether Sombra had access to them or not wasn’t his concern; he didn’t trust _anyone_ in Talon, so not trusting her wasn’t anything special.

Reaper took his mask off and dropped it onto his desk, then took the rest of his armor off piece by piece and shook it out, scowling at the grey dust that fell to the floor like a sick mockery of snow. A side effect of the accident: his cells reproduced and aged at an incredible rate, allowing him to heal from most injuries. The downside…

The nanite swarm that had been vital in helping him regain human form (and hold it easily) broke apart the cells that died inside his body, freeing the materials for new cells. The same could not be said for his skin, and he estimated that within six hours, he shed as much dead skin as the average person did in a week. That meant that unless he had recently scrubbed the built-up cells off his skin, it looked grey and dry, like he would crumble into dust at the slightest touch. Motion caused it to cake and flake off, leaving painful-looking crevices, and the friction of clothes or armor meant he was constantly feeling the stuff drift over his body and build up anywhere that wasn’t skin-tight.

Naked, he stomped into the bathroom and glared at himself in the mirror. He looked like a fucking zombie. Dragging his hands down his face left furrows and in disgust, he turned the water on and washed his hands until the bare, healthy skin was all that was left.

 _With this hand_ , he thought, holding the left hand up for inspection, _he had touched a beeping console. Jack had slid a ring onto that finger. What else had that hand done?_

He touched his face, scratching at the dead cells, scraping them away to reveal the dark skin underneath, almost the same color as Sombra’s. As he washed his face, scrubbing with an exfoliating mitt and rubbing with the pads of his fingers, he wondered…

Would Jack kiss this face?

 

* * *

 

~Sombra~

Working for Talon wasn’t all fun and games. Sure, there were more than enough pies for her to get her fingers into and plenty of new targets for her to chase, but contact with the outside world was risky at best and _her mate was pregnant_. Her daily mantra was reminding herself that she was proactively taking out a threat to her unborn baby by plotting to take Talon down, because once she’d gotten in and seen some of the shit Talon was up to? Oh yeah, they needed to be taken down. She may have started out with the singular goal of finding Gabriel Reyes, but Sombra was smart enough to know when a plan needed to change.

Besides, she’d _found_ him.

It really hadn’t been hard to locate the agent codenamed Reaper. What had been more difficult was getting herself assigned to the same division as his intelligence operative. He never took off the mask and armor where anyone could see – physically, anyway. There were all kinds of cameras and monitoring equipment in his suite, but they were impressively complex and secure and accessed regularly by one of the heads of Talon, the ‘MD’ who’d signed off on all of Reaper’s medical files about returning him to a solid form. He was clearly MD’s pet project, and Sombra was not ready to tangle with a Talon head…yet.

Fortunately, MD’s reports were much less securely encrypted when they were distributed to the other heads, particularly ‘MM’, who had supplied the nanite swarm responsible for helping Reaper achieve a fairly-effortless solid state. To the best of MD’s determination, Reaper’s neural pathways were still scrambled, rendering his memories effectively lost.

That tracked with what Sombra had been able to determine. Not that she’d had much luck getting close to Reaper, because he kept everyone at a very prickly distance. She couldn’t tell if he genuinely hated everyone and didn’t remember anything, or if he was keeping everyone at a distance because he _did_ remember something but couldn’t trust anyone. She couldn’t blame him if that was the case; MD’s reports made no effort to hide the fact that their subject was, in fact, Gabriel Reyes. If he _did_ remember anything and let slip that he did, he would certainly be found and, well…MD’s reports gave Sombra plenty of ideas as to what the scientist would like to do with ‘Reaper’ and if he remembered the things he’d already been through…

Yeah. She didn’t blame him for keeping everyone at a distance.

Annoyingly, this meant she had to keep up her own obnoxious persona so that he wouldn’t suspect that she suspected that he’d started to remember things because after what had happened in Giza – no one had any footage, video or audio, but things trickled back – she was certain he’d remembered _something_. So she kept being a smug little jerk to him, but stopped asking prying questions.

Instead, she started reaching cautiously out to MM because she’d been studying what she could find about the nanites, and she suspected that MM hadn’t told MD anything close to everything about the nanite swarm. It was a little side-project to keep herself distracted from not being able to be with her pregnant mate, something to still the itch in her fingers when she wanted to reach out and see how Jesse was doing. Talon gave her plenty of things to poke, but most of it was passive: set her hooks and lines and wait for something to bite.

Idly, she checked her lines before settling down to the question of MM, and suddenly her boredom vanished. There were tracks in several government systems; clumsy tracks, left by the same digital hand, as if the user had been gathering something. Sombra fired off a quick email – noting that MM was one of the recipients for news on this particular task – and waited for orders. When they came, minutes later, they were from MM: find the owner of the fingers and, if possible, what they were collecting.

Sombra left her rooms and knocked on Reaper’s door.

“What?” came the usual growl.

“Got a project from higher up. Might keep me occupied a few days. Need anything from me before I dive into it?”

“That implies I _ever_ need anything from you,” came the dry, biting response.

She wondered what he would do if she told him that she was mated to his pseudo-son.

“You might be surprised,” she chirped smugly. “See you when I come up for air.”

“Good riddance,” he muttered on the other side of the door.

Sombra retreated to her rooms and began chasing digital fingerprints through the global internet.

 

* * *

 

~Angela~

“You want me to do _what?_ ” Winston peered at her through the screen, blatantly disbelieving what he’d just heard.

Angela’s voice was naked steel. “Break into government databases all over the world and pretend you are gathering names and addresses of former Overwatch agents.”

“And let myself get caught,” the gorilla growled, eyes narrowed.

“Not _caught_. Let your tracks be found so that Talon can determine that it was you and infer what you were doing.”

“They’ll come after me,” he warned, and the cruel smile that put on Angela’s face made him recoil slightly.

“That is the plan,” she said smugly. “They will send Reaper after you to retrieve the database they think you have. But we will be prepared. Reaper will _not_ be returning to his masters.”

Winston adjusted his glasses. “I agree that something needs to be done about him, but I’m afraid I do not share your confidence in my ability to contain that…monster.”

“ _You_ will _not_ be containing him,” Angela corrected, her voice chilly. “Nor will you be killing him. Jack and I will deal with him. All I require is a secure room, something with reinforced walls and a door that locks from the outside. A secure room, and inside…a comfortable bed.”

 The silence stretched for a long moment.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Winston said firmly, “but I trust you. If you say you can contain and neutralize him, I will take you at your word. I will build this imaginary database, and do my best to warn you when I am discovered.”

“Thank you,” Angela said, her voice warm for the first time since she’d contacted him. “That is all I ask.”

When she left her home lab several hours later, she’d made progress on two fronts. The others had eaten dinner already, but Jack had saved her a portion and brought it to her – their – room. Again. He massaged the tension out of her shoulders as she ate, his hands warm but rough on her skin, his lips equally warm but soft. He didn’t say a word until she’d finished eating, and then he scooped her up to carry her to their bed. Jesse and Ana had been quite willing to sleep in the guest room again and let the couple have their privacy, and Jack took full advantage of that.

He started slow and gentle, his lips exploring the familiar contours of her skin in a substitution for the visual admiration he could no longer perform. Angela tolerated this for almost a minute before pulling his head up to kiss those scarred lips and push him over onto his back. Slowly, between kisses, she stripped them both and caressed the scarred skin she’d missed for too long. When they were both naked, she straddled his hips and let him pull her down into a tight, trembling hug with his face buried in her hair, her cheek pressed against his chest and the thudding of his heart echoing in her ear.

“I missed you,” he murmured. “Our dove. I’m sorry I ran away. I…”

He trembled, and Angela raised her head to kiss him softly. “I miss him too,” she sighed. “We’ll get him back, mein Schatz. I promise. We’ll get him back, and we’ll fix your eyes and whatever they’ve done to him.”

Jack rolled onto his side, taking her with him, and wrapped arms and legs around her until she couldn’t wriggle out of his embrace if she’d wanted to. Not that she did, of course. Angela relaxed, letting her mate cover her in his scent, reveling in the physical protection implicit in his embrace.

“I’m going to visit Winston in the Gibraltar Watchpoint sometime in the next few days,” she said quietly, one hand roving over his broad, hard-muscled back. “Get his input on some things I want to try.”

“Not without me,” Jack growled.

She kissed his chest, the only part of him she could reach with her lips. “I was hoping you’d say that. Do you want to talk to him, or-”

“No.”

“Alright.” She kissed him a second time. “I will have him prepare a secure room for us to sleep in. Ana and Jesse will stay here.”

“Good,” came the growled reply to that. “He needs to be kept safe. Ana will keep him safe.” A pause. “Thirty years and she never told me,” he said with a hint of a whine in his voice.

“She didn’t want to come between you and Gabe in any way,” Angela told him gently.

Jack huffed, but his desperate hold relaxed just a little. A few quiet minutes later, they were both asleep.

 

* * *

 

~Reaper~

When the orders came in – he would be raiding a supposedly-defunct Overwatch location to retrieve a database they had – he assumed Sombra would be all over him. Metaphorically, of course. She was, after all, the one making the device he was supposed to use to actually retrieve the information. Instead, she had been uncharacteristically withdrawn and holed up in her rooms for the three days following, with the result being that it was now less than an hour before he was supposed to take a small force and report to the dropship, and she still hadn’t emerged to give him the device.

Furious, he pounded on her door.

“What!”

“If you don’t have the device ready,” he growled, “I’m going to rip your throat out.”

He wouldn’t, but she didn’t need to know that.

“I’m in the middle of something,” she shot back. The door unlocked. “Come in and get it yourself.”

Reaper had never been in the hacker’s rooms. Cautiously, he opened the door and stepped inside, only to draw his guns on reflex when it locked behind him.

“Sorry, amigo,” she said from behind three computer screens, not sounding sorry at all. “Can’t be too careful, you know?”

He snorted. “I should have known. Where is the device?”

“I’ve got it,” she said evasively. “So, they’re sending you to Watchpoint Gibraltar.”

He couldn’t see more of her than her forehead and hair. “You read the mission report. Good for you.”

Sombra ignored his dry growl. “I heard that gorilla from the moon has taken up living there.”

“Your point?”

“Where he goes, that AI of his goes.”

Alarm shot down his spine; Athena had been one of the most secure secrets of Overwatch. “How-” Reaper bit the question short. Regardless of the fact that he had literally _just_ remembered Athena’s name, he wasn’t supposed to have known she existed at all “What AI?” he asked instead, but the damage was done. Purple eyes peered at him from over the monitors, glow from all three screens masking their color.

“So you _do_ remember things,” she said in a low voice. “It’s okay; all the recording devices are stuck in a loop showing me working on my computers for the next minute and a half.”

As if he would trust that.

“Do you remember who you are?”

That was a question without an easy answer, even if he had been inclined to give her one. He remembered his name. His husband. Apparently, he remembered Winston and Athena and so must have been part of Overwatch. But beyond that, things got fuzzy.

Sombra rolled her eyes. “I’m not your enemy. I’m your daughter-in-law.”

Impossible. Two men couldn’t have children. Unless one of them was an omega, but he would have remembered that, right?

Right?

“That omega boy you adopted,” she continued, clearly trying to jog his memory. “The cowboy.”

Jesse McCree. Now he remembered, a thin face with wisps trying their hardest to be a beard, scowling up at him, and promising that face that no one would know he wasn’t a beta unless he wanted them to.

“He’s my mate,” Sombra said with a strange gentleness in her voice, and Reaper could not bring himself to disbelieve her.

Still, that didn’t mean he trusted her.

“What boy?” he growled instead.

Huffing, Sombra stood and emerged from her little hacking corner. “You know, the only reason I came to work for Talon was to find you and see if I could get you out.”

That…sounded plausible, actually. But he couldn’t risk letting his act slip. He stood, impassive, and waited for her to make the next move.

Sombra crossed her arms. “Really?” she said, the word hard and sharp. “Really, Gabriel? I tell you Jesse is my mate, I know things I shouldn’t know unless he told me, and you stand there pretending you don’t remember anything?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment, fighting down the impulse to destroy everything in the room out of panic. “Who the hell is Gabriel?” he growled finally, seeing vague images of a man with a metal arm and someone he joked was Jack, even though it clearly wasn’t, and trying unironically to remember who the hell ‘Bucky’ was.

The hacker sighed. “Fine. You gonna play like that, fine.” She pulled a drawer open and handed him what looked like a cross between a handgun stock and one of those things you stab into corn on the cob so you can eat it without getting your hands buttered or burned. “When you get back,” she said firmly, “we gonna talk. I want to burn Talon to the ground and make sure it can never rise again, and I know you have to want in on that action.”

She was right; he did want to destroy Talon utterly. But he couldn’t break character.

“And bite the hand that feeds me?” he asked, the words stiff with sarcasm.

For a long moment she just stared at him, as if he were a chunk of code she were examining. Then she reached into her clothes and removed a small, intimately familiar comm unit which she placed in the palm of his other gauntlet and curled the clawed fingers over. Something beeped a warning, and she barked a sequence of letters and numbers. The beeping stopped.

“Reset the loop,” she said. “We got another three minutes. That’s a Blackwatch communicator. You would not _believe_ what I went through to get my hands on it. You don’t want to admit anything, fine. But if you want to take the mission as an opportunity to escape, and you don’t come back? You can use that to contact me and when I find a way to take Talon down, I’ll invite you to the party.” She gave him a crooked smile. “And if you do escape? Tell Jesse I miss him and I’ll do my best to get out of here before the baby comes.”

 _The baby_. Reaper bit his tongue to keep from demanding Sombra elaborate. Jesse was pregnant? Her mate was _pregnant_ and she’d left him to come here and find _him?_

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The words were forced and hollow, but they were the best he could do.

Sombra deflated, looking…wistful?...and tucked herself back behind her computers. With the mission device in one hand and hope in the other, Gabriel – _Reaper_ – walked out and left her to her hacking.

 

* * *

 

As the dropship flew through darkened skies on its pre-programmed path, he gnawed at the memories Sombra had unwittingly sparked. Winston and Athena, Jesse and Blackwatch, although he didn’t know what Blackwatch _was_ or how it related to him. He felt like he was a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and he only had a handful of pieces and was trying to make them fit together, or guess at their relation to each other.

Take this mission as an opportunity to escape, Sombra had said. But how? The dropship, as always, had been programmed to need no pilot and changing its course would alert Talon. At the end of the mission, when all agents were on board or after a set amount of time had passed, it would return to the base. If he was not on the ship, he would be assumed a traitor or dead, but that just left him stranded on a glorified rock, a sitting duck for whatever Talon did to retaliate.

Not only that, but it would be painting a target onto Winston’s furry back as well and although he did not remember if they even liked each other, the very idea of endangering others for his own gain made him recoil indignantly. No, that was not an option. He was damned if he did and damned if he did not, and he could see no third path leading to freedom, but…

…but he wanted it, and he wanted it badly.

Didn’t matter. Reaper was an international criminal, and underneath Reaper’s mask he was practically a zombie. It wasn’t like he could just shuck off his armor and walk down the street, whistling. His own body made him a prisoner more securely than anything Talon had done to him – because after many long nights thinking about it, he was certain that Talon _hadn’t_ done this to him. Not deliberately. It truly had been an accident, and they were just taking advantage of it. But whoever Gabriel Reyes had been, he doubted Winston would be happy to see him at all, much less willing to help him fake his death to Talon.

By the time the ship landed, he was in a foul mood and the small squad hurried into the building more afraid of him than they were of any traps the gorilla might have set.

Gunfire, animalistic roaring, and several hard impacts proved the surviving six members of the squad were right to have been afraid, and fueled by the bodies of the other two, Reaper let himself turn to mist as he flowed past the action. Four of the squad were able to deploy the electrified grapple devices, and with Winston contained, Reaper stalked over to the server banks. Sombra hadn’t told him how to use the device, but he didn’t care. It had spikes and a switch; he jammed it into a server at random and flicked the switch.

Then the scent hit him.

Sweet, sharp, warm, intoxicating and _just for him_. Like honey melting on lemon scones, like key lime pie fresh from the oven, like hot apple cider or mulled wine it went straight to his head and he needed _more_. Mission forgotten, he stalked out of the room and down the hall, following that delectable trail of scent and feeling the pants of his armor grow almost unbearably tight.

The trail led him to a door, open just enough to tease him, like a hand beckoning from behind a curtain. It had been years since he’d smelled this scent, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until now because hadn’t remembered it but now he was dying of thirst, starving, suffocating, and only quenching the burning need in his loins would restore him to life.

He slipped inside the door and tugged it shut behind him. No one would interrupt this; no one would keep him from that scent.

Inside, it was dark. Only emergency lights near the floor kept it from being completely impossible to see the wide bed waiting for him, and the figure sprawled on that bed, shifting slowly, one hand stroking-

Stroking?

It didn’t matter; what mattered was getting out of his armor so he could cover himself with that scent, quench it with his own, two become one and that one being whole. Clawed fingers tore at fastenings, ripped at seams, freed the shape he had not guessed lurked inside him, dead skin shuddering away as his cock lengthened, thickened, cartilage under the skin forming ridges that opened like little umbrellas, like the caps of fleshy mushrooms promising that when he released his load, not a drop would escape.

Finally naked, he climbed onto the bed, lips finding one hip and kissing as he breathed deep and-

Cumin and sweet corn, lemon and honey, sweet and savory and sharp and wild and he wasn’t just smelling _one_ impossibly-delicious scent, but _two_. This was Jack, stroking his amazingly thick cock with its plate-like ridges and the little beads that made him groan so delightfully. Jack, his husband, the other half of his soul, an alpha just like him.

Jack, covered in the scent of Angela’s arousal, with Angela nowhere in sight.

“Gabe?”

His voice was hesitant, lost, hopeful, afraid. It broke Gabriel’s heart and healed it all at once.

“I’m here,” he responded, kissing that hip and covering his love with his body, feeling their alpha erections rub against each other, Jack’s hands roaming up his body to cup his face and pull him down for a kiss. “I’m here, Jack. I love you. I missed you. I’m sorry.”

The hands on his cheeks drifted down to his shoulders as they kissed, crossing on his back, and then strong arms were holding him in a crushing embrace while equally strong legs wrapped around his, holding him tight.

“Gabe, mi amor, Churrito, I missed you.” Jack sounded close to tears.

Fair enough; he was close to tears himself. “I’m sorry, Jack. My darling. My treasure. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

Lips, on his lips, as desperate as he felt.

“Fuck me,” Jack murmured into his mouth. One arm released to grope somewhere, and came back to press a bottle of what had to be lube against his hand. “Fuck me, fill me with your cum so I can fuck you and fill you with mine.”

Gabriel smiled in the dark and blindly kissed his husband. “I’d make a joke about you being romantic, but right now I feel the same way.” Not that he remembered the joke anyway.

Almost reluctantly, they parted and Gabriel slathered thick lube on his ridged cock, taking his slicked fingers and gently stretching his husband’s tight tunnel until Jack groaned ‘please’, and then abandoning the attempt in favor of pushing slowly into that welcoming heat, feeling each ridge pop as it passed inside, Jack voicing a symphony as they scraped past his prostate. Once the last ridge was inside, they shared a sizzling kiss.

Then Gabriel abandoned himself to pure, primal pleasure and fucked his husband with the power of five years of denial. When climax finally found him, it felt like he was pouring his soul into Jack and he lay there, panting, hugged to his husband’s sweat-slicked chest, until his cock deflated and he was capable of rational thought again.

“I missed that,” Jack sighed contentedly. “I missed _you_ , babe.”

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel murmured again. “I didn’t remember anything. I didn’t remember you until I saw you.” He trembled slightly, fingers tightening, clinging to his husband, his _mate_. One of his mates? He was certain they were both mated to Angela even though the details of that escaped him at the moment. He didn’t even remember her _face,_ just her scent and the feel of her skin. “There’s still….so much I don’t remember.”

“Shhh.” Jack kissed him, lips and eyes and cheeks and forehead, and he relaxed as his husband rolled them over and covered him with his body. “I’m here. I’ve got you. _We’ve_ got you. You’re safe now.”

Gabriel wrapped arms and legs around his husband, every bit as insistent and clingy as Jack had been. “Fuck me,” he murmured into his love’s ear, nibbling gently on the earlobe. “I want you inside me, claiming me.”

“As you wish,” Jack said in a low voice, kissing his husband’s jaw.

The slicked fingers gently stretching him were sweet torture, the complimentary chips and salsa meant to whet your taste buds for the big, meaty burrito on its way, and when that thick, deliciously textured chorizo began sliding into him, only Jack’s hands holding his thighs still prevented him from rushing things along. A second time, they shared a sizzling kiss once they were in position, a mutual celebration of the complete lack of coherency they were about to experience, a wordless ‘see you on the other side, sweetheart’ in the moment before they tipped over the edge into alpha urges denied for half a decade.

When the end came, searing the world into a white haze of sticky hot bliss, Gabriel vaguely noted that the scent of Angela had faded, leaving them with the blended scent that was uniquely _them_ , a spicy musk he was no longer accustomed to smelling without her sweet citrus notes added to it. It was homey and familiar, recalling the years of their marriage before Angela had walked into their lives like a gift from god, and before he faded into satisfied slumber he realized that they’d tangled around each other in an act as smooth and natural as holding hands.

 

* * *

 

~Jack~

When they arrived at the Watchpoint, Winston was not there to greet them. He followed Angela, in his visor and jacket but without his rifle, through familiar corridors now reduced to pale blurs and thin red lines that sketched walls and doors and the figure of his mate. She led him to a secure room with a wide bed and coyly suggested they test it out to shake the stiffness of the journey from their bodies. The thought of performing such an act practically under the nose of their friend, there but unseen, sent an illicit thrill down to his loins and he watched, grinning, as red lines sketched her clothes being removed from her body, the pale blur of her blushing into the warm shade of her skin, and he submitted to her gentle fingers as she removed the tactical visor and left him navigating by hands and nose, by the feel of her skin under his lips as he kissed his way up to her breasts, down to her scent glands, and lower still.

Bathed in the sweet citrus and spice of their arousal, he felt himself harden and then expand, his shaft bulging as the cartilage plates shifted into position, forming the gentle ridges that made both of his mates cry out. Gently he slid into Angela’s omega orifice, slickly welcoming of his girth, warmly embracing _him_ as she made sounds that begged for more. For a long moment he covered her, pinning her to the bed as they kissed. Then he wrapped his arms around her and rolled them over, feeling a slight pang that Gabe wasn’t there to join in. With his hands freed, he lifted one to her breasts and let the other explore the orifice he wasn’t using, fingers sliding in to pleasure her from the inside while his thumb rubbed her clit in gentle circles, but she moved his hand out of the way to lean forward and kiss him, rising up to move him from one hole to the other.

Although his body was ecstatic that he was pleasing his omega again after so long, he missed the cinnamon musk of his alpha mate and the deeper sounds of Gabriel’s pleasure, the heat of his skin and the excitement of having too many options and not knowing which one they would go with at any moment. Angela missed it too, he knew. Although he and Gabe were frequently intimate without her – they _were_ married, after all – it was rare that either of them had sex with their omega while the other wasn’t there. Normally, his husband was the one to fill their dove’s vagina, so the experience was foreign and almost off-putting to him, the heat somehow tighter and more urgent. But it had been so long, so _very_ long, and Jack’s rational mind quickly drowned under the pleasure his body was experiencing. He bounced Angela on his cock, fingers flicking over sensitive nubs sending her over and feeling her shudder and milk him.

Then he took his place over her again and went from that hole to the proper one, grunting at the difference because no matter how adventurous or aroused a woman was, her vagina just wasn’t designed to regularly accommodate an alpha erection, where her omega orifice was. He drove in, hard and fast, ridges and beads making her cry out even as they pressed most deliciously against him, and when he could no longer hold out he let go, pulsing and shuddering as he filled her with his release and then melted against her as his knot swelled, the shape holding him in place while they lay there, spent and basking in afterglow, for a handful of minutes. Angela recovered first, kissing his face lightly as his knot deflated and murmuring that there was a bathroom with a shower and she was going to make sure Winston couldn’t smell what they’d been doing. He murmured agreement and she laughed. “I’ll let you sleep,” she teased, and he smiled before the world faded entirely into comfortable darkness.

 

* * *

 

Something startled Jack, deep in the sea of dreamless sleep that held him. But it faded, and he faded with it.

When he awoke, it was with a groan because Angela was…

…was…

Jack sat up, squinting and glaring at the darkened room because he could _smell_ his mate’s arousal, but she was nowhere to be found. Then he noticed that the scent seemed to be coming from…him? Slowly, he lay back down to the twin realizations that there was a bottle of lube in one of his hands and with how thick the scent was on his skin, he would not remain coherent for long. Already he was stroking himself with his free hand, and-

A sound, a rustle, and the sliver of light from the door winked out. Someone was in the room with him, taking clothes off with urgency, and he relaxed because it was just him and Angela and Winston, and the gorilla wouldn’t voluntarily enter this room so it had to be his mate. It seemed to take forever for that shadowy figure to strip and join him on the bed, but eventually lips pressed against his hip and…

…and the scrape of facial hair against his skin made the breath catch in his throat.

“Gabe?”

It couldn’t be. It _couldn’t_ be. But he could smell his husband, the cinnamon musk blending in with Angela’s lemon honey, and he was suddenly terrified this was a dream.

“I’m here,” Gabe said, kissing his hip again before climbing up to press as much of their bodies together as possible, and Jack let his hands tell him it was the truth before cupping his face to pull him down and verify the story with his lips. “I’m here, Jack,” he repeated as the kiss ended. “I love you. I missed you. I’m sorry.”

A second kiss, affirming that his husband was really there, and then Jack wrapped all his limbs around his husband as if he could deny the last handful of years with his embrace alone.

“Gabe,” he gasped, almost a sob. His chest felt tight, like it was crammed full of so many emotions – love and grief and fear and guilt and hope – that it might explode. “Mi amor. Churrito. I missed you.”

“I’m sorry, Jack.” His love sounded just as emotionally wrecked. “My darling. My treasure. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

Words failed them and they kissed, apologies given and accepted, love declared and reciprocated.

“Fuck me,” Jack pled, groping for the bottle Angela had to have left with him. “Fuck me, fill me with your cum so I can fuck you and fill you with mine.”

It had been the first thing they’d done, with Angela’s help. Claiming each other, alpha to alpha, fumbling at the bond biology wouldn’t let them make alone. Right now, he desperately wanted that ritual reestablished.

“I’d make a joke about you being romantic,” Gabe teased, “but right now I feel the same way.”

Being slicked and stretched felt like slow torture, assaulting a starving man with the scent of barbecue and baking cookies, and he tolerated it as long as he could (because the human anus was _not_ meant to take an alpha erection) before a pleading ‘please’ slipped out from between his scarred lips. His ass wasn’t _nearly_ as prepared for Gabe’s amazing alpha cock as it could have been, especially after half a decade of chastity, but his sweetheart went slow and feeling those fleshy ridges slip slowly inside…teasing his prostate one after another…

Jack found that he didn’t care about anything except the fact that Gabe was _here_ , inside him, and he was about to get his brains fucked out.

 

* * *

 

Gabe didn’t have a knot like he did, but the mushroom-like hoods studding his shaft formed a plug that was more than adequate and kept them physically bound together until it deflated, giving them plenty of time to pull themselves back from the mind-shattering glory of orgasm, and Jack found that he was hugging his husband to his chest, panting and covered in a sheen of sweat.

“I missed that,” he sighed, contentment making the words thick like honey. “I missed _you,_ babe.”

Later, they’d address the whole ‘Reaper’ thing. Right now, none of that mattered.

“I’m sorry,” his husband murmured. “I didn’t remember anything. I didn’t remember you until I saw you,” he confessed, trembling and clinging. “There’s still…so much I don’t remember.”

So Jesse’s intel had been right; the important part was that Gabe had remembered him. He kissed his love, light kisses all over his face, making soothing sounds before rolling them over to cover him, the way he’d done with Angela. The alpha’s full-body hug from above. “I’m here,” he assured his alpha mate. “I’ve got you. _We’ve_ got you,” he added, belatedly remembering Angela, whose honey-lemon scent still clung to them. “You’re safe now.”

Because he would kill all of Talon single-handedly to protect Gabe. _If_ Angela didn’t kill them first.

Gabe wrapped limbs around his body in the same clingy embrace Jack had used not too long ago. “Fuck me,” he murmured, half a plea and half a command, teeth on Jack’s earlobe. “I want you inside me, claiming me.”

Well, that was exactly what Jack wanted, so he smiled. “As you wish,” he said, wondering if Gabe remembered the reference as he kissed his husband’s jaw.

Carefully, he took a turn slicking and stretching, the motions as natural as breathing. Then he held Gabe’s thighs apart as he began sliding in because his darling had a habit of trying to rush things and delaying them instead. If sliding into Angela’s welcoming heat had been amazing, then the tight contours of his alpha mate were a dream come true and the kiss they shared was warning and celebration of the fact that they were about to shed any vestige of coherency and lose themselves in each other.

It was a delicious eternity before Jack shuddered over the edge, pulling back just enough that his knot could slide slowly out as it swelled, his face buried in Gabriel’s neck, smelling the unique scent of _them_ that they’d lived with for so many years. “I love you,” he breathed, or thought he did, as they curled around each other in the old familiar tangle. Then there was nothing but darkness, and love.

 

* * *

 

When he woke up again, he nearly drifted back off because both his mates were in bed with him and everything was right in the world. Then the lights came up, waking them gently, and Angela gasped.

“Gabriel! Your skin…”

But whatever had alarmed her about their mate’s skin, he wasn’t going to find out anytime soon because Gabriel was half-sobbing her name and it turned into time to hug-sandwich their newly-rescued mate. Jack may not have been able to see the tears, but he could hear them in everyone’s voices – his included – as they reaffirmed affections. His husband apologized repeatedly for not remembering things, listing out the events or details he remembered, and by the time he was done, he was firmly snuggled against Jack’s chest having the top of his head kissed. It didn’t matter how big the gaps in his memory were; this was _his husband_ and they’d been separated for too long.

“We will help you recover your memories,” Angela promised. “But Gabriel…what happened to your skin?”

The alpha in his arms made a growling sound of annoyance. “It’s fine,” he muttered. “It only _looks_ unhealthy. My cellular metabolism is through the roof and dead skin cells build up like crazy, but under that my skin is fine.” Gabe paused, then said in a soft voice, “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to kiss me, Jack. That you’d be put off by the way it looks.”

Well, he _had_ been wondering what it looked like, but he hugged his alpha tighter. “Can’t be put off by what you can’t see,” he growled shortly.

“Jack?”

“Jack is functionally blind,” Angela said gently. “I am working on treatments to restore his vision by correcting the conditions limiting it.”

“I’ll be your eyes, Elote,” Gabe said firmly, using the nickname that never failed to make his ears burn by reminding him that while Gabe’s favorite thing to put in his mouth was Mexican street corn – elote – his second favorite was Jack’s cock.

“Gracias, mi amor,” he murmured, kissing the top of Gabe’s head again.

“And I will find a way to address your cellular metabolism,” Angela added delicately. “The bed looks like it had sand dumped in it, and when you scratched your calf, you left visible furrows in the dead skin. You two stay here,” she said, climbing out of the bed. “I will find a discarded uniform for Gabriel to wear, and then Winston and I will throw Reaper’s armor into the sea along with the bodies of Talon’s soldiers.”

“Wait!” Gabriel jerked in his arms, and Jack loosened his hold. “Sombra gave me a communicator. Let me get it before you take the armor away.”

Jack let him go and tried to smother the spike of anxiety that came from not being able to see either of his mates in the dim haze that was his field of vision. “So she _did_ find you,” he said to cover his reaction.

“She did.” There was some rustling and clattering, and then it stopped. “Is Jesse really pregnant?” Gabe asked in a voice of quiet awe. “I don’t- I can’t remember what he looks like past when he was a scruffy little teenager. I don’t know what he did or what I did or what happened before the accident, but I know I would kill to protect him.”

“He is,” Jack confirmed as his husband crawled back across the bed and into his arms. “He’s staying at Angela’s while Sombra is in Talon, although now that we’ve got you…”

“She’s not leaving,” Gabe answered. “Not yet. She wants to burn Talon to the ground, and I want in on that.”

“I want in on that, too,” he growled softly, pulling his husband back into his arms. “But in the meantime…Jesse and Ana are staying at Angela’s, and they miss you.”

“I miss them too,” his husband said, shudders wracking his body.

Jack kissed him. “We’ve got you, sweetheart. You’re safe.”

 

* * *

 

~Gabriel~

Angela had not only found him a discarded Overwatch uniform, but a rag with which she scrubbed the dead skin angrily off his body before he dressed. Jack made a few teasing comments about wishing he could appreciate the show, hands sliding over each cleansed limb, rough fingertips making him shudder. Then it was over and Gabriel – he could finally just be _Gabriel_ again – dressed in uniform and wrapped himself around his husband, trying not to cry.

Their dove helped him dress Jack and bundled them onto a small ship where they clung to each other the whole way back to…wherever they were going. Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to care. When they landed, she hurried them into a vehicle with tinted windows and Gabriel found himself sandwiched between both his mates as they made their automatic way through traffic and finally stopped…somewhere.

“We are home,” Angela announced, her voice trembling with warmth and joy.

Home. _Her_ home, where Jesse and Ana were waiting. His friends, _their_ friends, their _family,_ people who knew him and loved him and who he barely remembered. He wasn’t sure if what he felt was guilt, shame, or hope, but he swallowed it all down to help Jack out of the car – with gratuitous kisses and touches, of course. His sweetheart had decided against wearing the visor, sacrificing sight for kisses, and could barely see the car’s open door. As Angela went to open the door to the house, he scrubbed at his face with one sleeve to clear away whatever dead skin had built up on the trip before leading Jack after her.

“It’s okay, babe,” his husband murmured, voice a low rumble. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

A little desperately, he kissed Jack before guiding him through the door.

“Gabriel!”

Ana. That was Ana Amari, but where he remembered a fierce young woman, she was white-haired with wrinkles around her left eye and a _patch_ over her right and suddenly…he didn’t remember why his stomach was filled with dread, but something about that eyepatch made him tremble and he _knew_ that he would regret it when the memories came back.

“Gabe!”

That was Jesse, and with relief he tore his eyes away from Ana to take in the updated sight of his pseudo-son. No longer a skinny teenager, Jesse McCree had filled out into a sturdy man with enough softness on his frame to be reassuring; his boy hadn’t been starving. Then the bulge of his belly registered and he remembered what Sombra had said.

Jesse was _pregnant_. His scruffy little omega adoptee was pregnant, and his mate was in Talon, probably praying that her surly co-worker hadn’t thrown away the communicator. In her absence, it fell to him to protect the vulnerable omega and his unborn child.

He was hugging Jesse tightly, vaguely aware that the man had stumbled off a couch and across the room, more concerned by the snuffling sobs being muffled as the younger man cried into his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Boss. I’m sorry…”

Before Gabriel could figure out a response – he had no idea what Jesse was apologizing for, and a sinking feeling that knowing would only make him unhappy – Jack was there, making it a group hug.

“He doesn’t remember,” Jack said firmly. “It’s okay. He doesn’t remember much, but it’s okay. He’s back now.”

“I’m still sorry,” the younger man repeated stubbornly.

Gabriel hugged him closer. “I don’t remember whatever it is you’re sorry for,” he said hesitantly, “but there’s an ache in my heart so whatever it was…I’m sorry too, mijo. I love you. you’re family, you’re my son and I love you and I’m proud of you.”

Jesse laughed shakily. “Even though I whored myself out for a lot of goddamn money?”

“Is that how you met Sombra?” he asked, struggling not to cry again. The scent of lemon and honey from his other side told him that Angela had joined the hug. “She’s a good girl, mijo. You did good.”

The cowboy’s arms tightened, and he swallowed a broken sob. “Thanks,” he whispered.

“Gabriel?”

Jesse and Angela re-arranged themselves to let Ana into the cluster, and Gabriel freed an arm to pull her against him, distantly aware that he could smell her omega scent clearly for…the first time? Yes, he’d caught a few whiffs here and there and pieced her nature together from observations, but she had never come out and declared that she was an omega and so he had never voiced his conclusion to anyone, not even Jack.

“I don’t remember what happened to you,” he murmured into her headscarf. “But I feel like if I did, I’d be angry at you.”

“It was a moment of weakness,” she said quietly. “I saw something that shook me, and I doubted myself. It was foolish and it caused pain to the people I care about. I will not attempt to justify my actions, only apologize for them and promise that I will do everything I can to make up for the hurt I caused.”

“Enough,” Jack growled, trying to hug them all. “What’s past is past. We’re all together, and there’s more than enough to keep us busy in the present.”

“Indeed,” Angela said dryly. “Sombra remains in Talon seeking a way to bring them down, Jesse is pregnant, Jack is blind, and Gabriel…”

“I’m a fucking wreck,” he supplied. “I still don’t remember pretty much _anything_ and I shed dead skin like an entire herd of dogs with dandruff. But I’m here, and I love you all, and I’m hungry enough to eat an entire pizza by myself.”

That made them laugh, and he smiled weakly as Jack claimed his lips.

“Then by all means,” Ana said, her left eye crinkling in amusement, “let us order pizza.”

 

* * *

 

~Ana~

Pizzas were ordered and delivered and consumed, Jesse requesting some monstrosity that satisfied the nutritional demands of his pregnancy and Jack looking misty-eyed as he listed off his and Gabriel’s favorites. She and Angela happily split something less Americanized, with eggplant and feta and spinach. It was…well, to be honest, it was _heartbreaking_ watching two of her oldest friends curl around each other on the couch, murmuring quietly to each other. Gabriel handed slices of pizza to Jack, or guided his hand, but in between those moments he seemed…fragile. Vulnerable. Almost afraid.

It hurt.

They were together, most of a little family, in a place that should have been safe, and yet…Gabriel was not at ease. He clung to his husband and his omega mate as though taking refuge in their scents, and hid from her frowning looks. After dinner, he told them haltingly about how he had woken up in a lab as a black mist, with no memory or sense of who he had been. How laboriously he had learned to take a solid shape, how Talon had told him he had been the mercenary Reaper and disavowed all knowledge of his identity past the name and the armor. The one memory he had recovered, of reaching for a beeping device and the black goo exploding all over him. The wedding ring he could clearly see on his hand in that memory, the crack in Talon’s lies. How he had remembered his husband at the last second – the handful of memories, sparked by the jacket and tied together by the love in Jack’s eyes – but still couldn’t remember who he had been. He hadn’t remembered Ana until she shouted, and he’d been preoccupied with faking his way through a confrontation he had no intention of winning and, at the same time, suddenly realizing how much he stood to lose if Talon suspected he had remembered _anything,_ even if that was just his name. Her silvered hair and the eyepatch hadn’t registered at the time, and his memories were from back when Fareeha was still a baby.

He hadn’t remembered Angela until he’d smelled her in the Watchpoint. He still didn’t remember anything past that they were mates, somehow. His memories of Jesse were the scrawny, scruffy youth he’d been when he first joined Overwatch. And he _was_ afraid, but not of them. Afraid that he would never regain his memories, afraid that he would remember something that tainted the affection he had for all of them.

Afraid of finding out who he had been and what he had done.

The evening descended into stories of happier days, each of them recounting anecdotes from his youth that he had shared with them over the years. Slowly, they painted him a picture of Captain Reyes, US Army, West Point graduate and fiercely loyal friend. How he and Jack had volunteered for the Soldier Enhancement Program. That necessitated a break for shuddering and tactical reassurance as he apparently remembered what, exactly, the program had entailed. The Omnic Crisis, he remembered on his own. As much as they all wanted to end the evening on a lighter note than that, Gabriel declared that he didn’t want to remember any more for the time being and his mates herded him off to their shared bed.

She and Jesse packed the handful of leftovers up and put them away before retiring to the guest room. In the dark, they talked quietly about how unnerving it was to see Gabriel like that, and Jesse confessed that he didn’t want to tell his commander how they’d parted. Ana confided that she, too, had no desire to talk about her near-death experience. They fell asleep clinging to each other, seeking comfort in adopted family.

 

* * *

 

The weeks passed in a blur of quiet domesticity framed by unspoken tension. The communicator Sombra had given Gabriel was put cautiously to use, and she reported that Talon believed Reaper to be dead. Gabriel quietly thanked her for her efforts in tracking him down, but refused to say more. Jesse practically lit up at the opportunity to talk to his mate, and although he was careful to not say anything about where he was or who else was there, he did let her know that he was healthy and safe. After that, the remaining tensions were Jesse – and to her surprise, Gabriel – being worried for Sombra’s safety, Gabriel’s damaged memory, Jack’s damaged sight, and Angela’s attempts to put her mates to rights.

Jack’s blindness had been a shock – he’d hidden it from her and Jesse – and he wore the tactical visor nearly all the time. Gabriel alternated between acting like his old self and suddenly turning fragile and unsure. Usually, that was triggered by tripping across something that made him aware of the holes in his memory, or just seeing the build-up of dead skin cells on his body. It _was_ rather dramatic to realize that his skin was an ashy grey color and see him scrape the flaky stuff off his arms before retreating to the bathroom, usually followed by Jack or Angela, to wash himself angrily clean.

While Angela spent most of her time in her home lab, or commuting to the hospital to attend things there or use the equipment, Gabriel spent much of his days in quiet conversation with one of them – usually his husband. They told him stories, slowly and gently sparking memories and helping him fill in the gaps, focusing by mutual agreement on Overwatch’s early years. The first time one of them mentioned Moira, he got very quiet and still.

“She had to know,” he murmured darkly, but he refused to elaborate.

Jack’s sight, which he refused to discuss, returned slowly. Angela brought him – very reluctantly – to the hospital to have one eye operated on, and when they returned, his left eye was under a bandage and he immediately vanished into the bedroom with Gabriel. Shrapnel, Angela explained to her other two guests, from the explosions. His left eye had sustained nerve damage and death from the foreign objects embedded in his eye, but his enhanced healing from SEP combined with a dose of medical nanites would restore the eye fully over the course of a week. But that alone would not restore his sight; Jack suffered not one form of visual impairment, but two – shrapnel in his left eye, glaucoma in his right. Once the bandage came off, she assured them all, the strain on his right eye would diminish and she could begin a treatment of medical nanites for his right optic nerve. It would take time, but Angela was confident that he would eventually regain full use of both his eyes.

In the meantime, of course, he continued wearing his tactical visor around the house.

The combination of safety, family, food, and medical attention meant that his surly, prickly attitude melted back into something they were all more accustomed to, and a bit sheepishly he admitted that he’d been in a very bad place ever since he’d crawled out of the wreckage of his quarters with nothing more than the clothes on his back – Gabriel’s hoodie and sweatpants, he said in a low voice that shook, the scent of his husband that clung to the cloth one of the few ties to sanity he had – and the burning need for vengeance against whoever had been responsible for destroying his life. The combination of thinking he’d lost his husband and the headaches from various injuries, the guilt that led to heavy drinking and the resultant hangovers, were bad enough…but he also hadn’t been sleeping well for all of those years. Paranoia, pain, and nightmares had added to his misery until it compounded into a sort of passive suicidal state. After all, he told them gruffly, face buried in Gabriel’s shoulder, what did he have to live for? What difference would it make if he’d died?

Jack was surprised to find himself sandwiched between Jesse and Gabriel at that, and even more so when Ana politely requested Gabriel move so she could cuddle his husband. Both she and Jesse had felt that siren song of despair, and while she had pulled herself out of that pit for the sake of her daughter and the friends who thought she was dead, Jesse hadn’t realized it had gotten that bad until by chance he’d answered Sombra’s ad.

That’s when he told them _exactly_ how he and his mate had met – that he had agreed to sex with a stranger for a _very_ generous amount of money, only to discover that he’d stumbled into the nest of a woman who had spent years unintentionally preparing to woo him, and they’d fallen in love.

Ana was more hesitant in speaking about her experience, doing her best to avoid mentioning the circumstances and focusing on the emotional impact of being thought dead and nearly being killed by the destruction of her biotic eye – the very thing that saved her life, since without it, that bullet would have gone straight through her head. That got Gabriel clinging to her, trembling as he remembered mourning her death, and she moved the conversation to what Fareeha was doing and how she’d reached out to Angela, the only one she’d told the secret of her being an omega.

After that, they began gently filling Gabriel in on Blackwatch and the later years of Overwatch. Angela was beginning to look frazzled at her inability to put an end to Gabriel’s skin issues, and although he kept his activity to a minimum, his accelerated metabolism was beginning to put a clear strain on his body. More than once, Gabriel stopped mid-sentence when the surprise on her face made him realize his body was slowly disintegrating into a black powder, and there were some mornings he didn’t leave the master bathroom until almost lunch. Adding his increased appetite along with Jack’s was straining the group’s finances, and it was clear that he was deliberately eating no more than his husband. It made Ana feel guilty for directing most of her attention to Jesse, but she _was_ the only one of them who had experience as a mother and he _needed_ her.

She tried not to think about Fareeha, and if her daughter would live long enough to have a child of her own. Some day, she would have to face her habibi and beg forgiveness for having let her believe her mother was dead, but in the meantime she was serving an important role helping Jesse through his pregnancy. She knew how rough it was, being pregnant without a mate or even a spouse to protect her, so she left Gabriel to his mates and devoted herself to being a surrogate mother-in-law.

One night, after they had gone to bed, Jesse used the Blackwatch communicator to contact his mate and ask if she could do ‘something’ about the money/food situation. The way she laughed made Ana uneasy, but Jesse was beaming with proud adoration, so she held her tongue. The next day, a postcard was slipped into the mailbox. The picture was the Grim Reaper, and the back bore only an address in town. Gabriel insisted on going alone, assuring both his mates that he would be fine, and with many worried looks they let him go.

Two hours later he returned, beaming and bouncy, with a duffle bag full of cash and cred cards and – oddly – MREs. The labels were not ones she recognized, and neither did Jack or Jesse. The address, he told them, was a Talon supply dump.

Jesse beamed. “That’s my girl,” he said proudly.

“You picked a good one,” Gabriel told him, but he shook his head.

“It’s not like I did anything special to woo her. She picked me; I just accepted.”

They all laughed at that, with knowing smiles for the alphas because they knew it was truth, while Ana felt a small pang that she had never felt – nor desired – the tug of romance.

 

* * *

 

~Gabriel~

The weeks passed quietly, to his relief. His friends, his _family_ , were understanding and patient with the vast, gaping holes in his memory and would pass the time happily with him, just sitting and talking and telling stories. Their words unlocked memories, like an artist painting with watercolors or search terms finding the documents lost within infinite, unlabeled folders. He still had incidents – far too many incidents – where he realized he was referencing something he no longer remembered or had been feeling secure in himself, only to trip over a hole where there should have been knowledge.

For a time, he was able to distract himself with caring for Jack. His husband was surly, lashing out in pain and frustration at not being able to see, and they often retreated to do things that required neither eyes nor memory, and afterwards talked quietly about their insecurities. His husband had been showering at the time of the attack, he learned, and likely had survived purely because being surrounded by water protected him from flames. He’d escaped wearing clothes he’d snatched from their hamper, and tremblingly confessed that his Churrito’s sweatpants and hoodie had been an emotional lifeline, especially as his sight failed. He’d kept the clothes, held them as he tried to sleep, smelling the fading scent of his husband until nothing remained and even past that, feeling like he was losing himself as he lost his sight and his husband’s scent.

In turn, Gabriel talked about what it had been like to achieve a solid form for the first time, examining himself and wondering what had happened to cause the various scars. His prickly darling, his handsome sweetheart, his mate and husband held him close for hours at a time and with trembling words told his side of the story of _them_. How they’d met, their first dates, when he realized he’d fallen in love. As treasure troves of memory opened, he shared them with his other half, re-affirming their love and devotion.

Their dove was busy for long stretches of each day, and while he was grateful for the time with his husband, they made sure to lavish attention on her when she emerged. He never tired of kissing the roses tattooed around her scent glands, the flushed petals that had been proof that they lived and given her strength after the explosions turned Overwatch to ash.

There was only one thing marring those happy weeks.

Okay, two.

Three?

Four.

Talon still needed to burn, but until Sombra had an opportunity and a plan, there was nothing he could do on that front. Jack was still blind in one eye, and as sweet as it was to see Ana being the mother Jesse had never known but always needed, they were all painfully aware that his mate was in the heart of enemy territory. And the elevated metabolism that caused him to shed skin cells like a fairy leaving trails of pixie dust was slowly starving him.

It’s not like he didn’t _know_ his nutritional needs were…different. The nanite swarm that helped him keep his form required certain compounds or base materials from which to build the compounds, and his elevated metabolism meant he could eat twice as much as a normal man at every meal and still be hungry. And sure, there were times he kind of…ate…Talon goons, but that was when he was straining his system by turning to smoke at the drop of a hat, and he hadn’t done that since he’d scented Angela in the Watchpoint, and for two weeks he convinced himself that he wouldn’t need to feed in that way because he wasn’t abusing his structural integrity.

Then the hunger hit.

He forcibly ignored it, because now that he remembered who he was, the thought of _eating people_ made him feel queasy. But the gnawing ache in his gut never quite went away, and then at the end of the third week, Ana suddenly stopped mid-sentence to stare at him in horror and he realized his arm was…smoking. He’d fled, of course, and Jack had sat outside the bathroom talking to him for an hour before he’d come out. But after that, he started eating non-food waste on the sly. Wrappers, bags, anything that got thrown out, anything that might provide his systems with the materials they needed, but it didn’t help.

There were mornings he couldn’t hold himself in a solid shape until he’d slipped down the shower drain into the sewers and devoured _something_ – he refused to think about what he was taking in while he was a cloud of black smoke – and found his way back out. He could tell that Jack was worried for him, and Angela was already harried trying to figure out how to get his metabolism to slow down, but neither of them pressed the issue when he said there was nothing either of them could do to alleviate his condition.

Then Sombra sent him a postcard.

It was clearly for _him_ ; the picture was the Grim Reaper. It was just as clearly from Sombra, as it had no postmark on it. As for the address, well, he was confident in his ability to survive a potential spray of bullets and he knew that Sombra knew the things he’d done as Reaper. If she knew he was hungering for live victims, she certainly wouldn't come out and _say_ ‘got some guys here for you to eat’ but if she didn’t…

No one had to know.

He scrubbed his face, shrugged into a hoodie, and let Ana drop him off a couple blocks away. The building was nondescript, but his eyes narrowed at the telltale signs marking it as a Talon location and instead of trying the door, he misted under it. His first priority was making sure the goons stationed there couldn’t raise an alarm, and the best way to do that…

Well, he _was_ hungry.

Once they were gone, he disposed of the withered remains and started searching. The cache of weaponry went to feed his nanites, and it didn’t take long to empty everything of use into a convenient duffle bag. Then he hailed a cab to a kilometer away from Angela’s and hiked the rest of the way back, humming, in the highest spirits he’d experienced since he’d first woken up as a mist with no memory. He had enough cash and cred cards to keep them all in comfortable luxury until after the baby was born, enough shelf-stable rations to supplement the groceries and satisfy his appetite for a while, and when they ran out? Well, surely by then Talon would have restocked and he could pay them another visit.

That evening was lighthearted and celebratory, with a buffet’s worth of take-out ordered and everyone feasting. That _night_ was celebratory in a different way; he finally had the energy to initiate and participate in something more than the gentle threesomes and cuddling they’d been doing, and Gabriel spent an hour making sure each of his mates was _completely_ satisfied before they all dropped into a pleasantly exhausted slumber.

Angela lured him out of bed the next morning with kisses, quietly informing him that she needed to run tests and take samples again, and half-asleep he let her lead him to the home lab where he stared vacantly as she did various things and wondered how she always managed to be so _awake_ in the mornings. She released him just as he was starting to become alert, and he wandered into the kitchen to start breakfast for everyone. As usual, she didn’t emerge for food and once everyone was done, he slipped back inside to bring her a plate.

He found her frowning, arms crossed.

“We need to talk,” she said firmly. Her _doctor_ voice, the one that meant she couldn’t be reasoned with or distracted with kisses. “Your body is…refreshed…where it was withering just three days ago.”

Test by test she listed the results, which ranged from neuron activity and the structure of his grey matter to white blood cell count and even the renewed health of the mitochondria in his cells, which had been dying out. Then she simply crossed her arms and waited, lips pressed together unhappily, for him to explain how he had been breaking down across the board and now suddenly was healthy. Very reluctantly, Gabriel told her that he’d effectively eaten four Talon grunts, and that as Reaper, he’d regularly left one or two as piles of disintegrating cells about once a week. She sighed, and then she hugged him and cried softly because he _had_ been dying, and while it was a relief to know the condition was so easily reversed, the solution wasn’t one either of them were happy about. They brought Jack in to tell him the news, and his embrace was grim and tight. He was a soldier; death was not a stranger to him, especially when it was a matter of survival, and his distaste was outweighed by his desire to see Gabriel healthy.

When they were alone, Jack offered solemnly to put on his Soldier 76 gear and hunt down muggers and rapists for his husband to eat, or talk to their dove about being bait for the same, but Gabriel shut him up with kisses. There was no need to go hunting when Talon would deliver fresh victims. Jack sulked a little, despite the kisses, until Gabriel asked if he would like to come along and beat up the new batch of Talon goons – tenderize them for his husband, he joked. The enthusiastic kissing he got for that suggested that yes, Jack would like that very much indeed.

When he and Jack made plans to go out together a week later, no one questioned it. The holidays were coming up, and whether the two were going shopping or just going on a date, Ana and Jesse just smiled and wished them a pleasant outing. The Talon supply dump hadn’t updated their security, so Gabriel slipped inside and unlocked the door for his husband. There were only two goons there this time and, hilariously, they seemed to be conducting a search of the small base – probably to determine what had happened to the last four.

Of all the things they may have expected, hoped, or feared they’d find, Gabriel thought it was pretty safe to assume that Soldier 76 had not been on any of those lists.

His Elote took his sweet time with the goons, expertly disarming them before kicking their asses, jumping smoothly between them as each one tried to flee while he was busy with the other. Once they’d given up, he dropped the one he’d been punching onto the other and stood, breathing heavily but beaming.

“Dinner is served, Churrito,” he proclaimed proudly, and Gabriel stepped forward for a brief kiss before dissolving into mist and enveloping the limp pile.

Afterwards, they shared a longer kiss…then another one…then a third, with the addition of roaming hands, and then Jack pulled a bottle of lube out of his jacket and they took advantage of Gabriel’s post-meal energy on top of a media-enabled desk. Neither of them noticed the little blinking light or the counter indicating how long the call had been going on until Gabriel lifted himself up to pull slowly out.

“Oops,” he said absently. “We accidentally called… _someone_.”

Jack sat up to squint at the call timer. At first, he flushed at the realization that whoever they’d called had heard them having sex. Then he grinned. “I want to say hi,” he declared.

Gabriel snorted a laugh. “You already did, babe. With your butt.”

“I butt-dialed them,” chuckled his husband.

 _“I’m so glad you find this amusing,”_ an omnic voice said dryly from the desk. _“Now, who are you and what are you doing in that office?”_

“My husband,” Gabriel retorted before it occurred to him that discretion _might_ be the better part of valor in this situation. Jack’s barked laugh made him smile, at least.

 _“You don’t gotta answer that,”_ Sombra’s voice sighed from the desk. _“I know who you are. There’s a camera up in the corner- no, the other one. Don’t worry, I’m taking care of the footage, same as I did last week.”_

“Oops,” Gabriel murmured again as he and Jack put themselves to rights.

 _“How interesting,”_ purred the omnic. _“Well, the presence of…your husband…gives us an easy explanation for the vanished agents and assorted supplies. We’ll just keep this between us, shall we, Commander Reyes?”_

Startled, Gabriel half-dissolved into smoke before pulling himself back together. After a moment, his grim-faced husband moved to flank him, and he glowered at the camera.

 _“Oh, we’ve known who you were from the start,”_ the omnic assured him. _“Well, we had to take her word initially, but once you were able to pull yourself together…it really wasn’t a secret to anyone with the clearance to see the footage. I do hope to see you at Masquerade, Commander. Sombra can give you the details, but now that this little mystery has been cleared up, there are other things demanding my attention.”_

There was a click, and then Sombra sighed again. _“I was gonna send you an invitation, make it a little Christmas gift from me to you, but he spoiled the surprise.”_

“You found an opening,” Gabriel said dryly, leaning into his husband’s embrace. “Is my sweetheart invited, too?”

She laughed. _“Si, you can bring a plus one. I’ll send you all the details later. You two done there?”_

Jack cleared his throat. “We’re done, yes.”

 _“Good, get lost so I can clean up your digital tracks,”_ she teased. _“And it’s good to see you two so happy. I can’t wait until I can see it in person. Tell Jesse I said hi.”_

“Will do,” Gabriel said. “Be safe.”

The call ended.

 

* * *

 

~Sombra~

She hadn’t _actually_ expected the ship to return from Watchpoint: Gibraltar with no one aboard. Reaper by himself, maybe, or a couple of beaten-up agents by themselves, but not _empty_. By the same token, she’d expected to have to sift through irrelevant information her little contraption sent back, but she hadn’t expected that the entire database Winston had been constructing would be a sham. MM hadn’t been happy to hear that the entire mission had been an unmitigated failure, and he(?) ordered a sweep of the coast. Reaper had been sent out with eight soldiers. Two of them hadn’t survived the trip, to judge by the disintegrating remains in the ship. Bodies of the other six were recovered, broken and battered, from the rocks surrounding the Watchpoint.

So was Reaper’s armor.

MM and MD were _livid_. The digital communication between the two flew back and forth, filled with sharp words and angry accusations, but in they end they reluctantly concluded that if Reaper _had_ been killed, the nanite swarm would have allowed his body to dissolve in the water and examining the armor would provide no clues because his metabolism meant it would have been full of dead cells no matter what.

Sombra thought that was rather interesting.

The other Talon heads didn’t bother holding back their mockery. V and AO in particular (although the latter’s communications were…limited) were viciously pressing their advantage, clearly trying to position themselves for a coup. Sombra took advantage of this upset to the formerly-stable power structure – a compromised jet here, a hacked hovercar there, and suddenly every head of Talon was at the throats of the others, accusing them of plotting murder. Tempers flared, tensions rose, and Sombra sat at the center of her little web and laughed.

Then MM contacted her directly, discreetly, asking her assessment of the Watchpoint mission. She told him(?) she thought it had been a setup, the database nothing more than bait to lure Reaper into a trap. MM suggested (along the same ultra-secure channel, utilizing _omnic_ encryption) that Reaper may have recovered his memories and was now taking out the heads of Talon one by one. When she asked for the reason behind that theory, MM replied with a chastisement to not treat him(?) like a fool. He(?) knew she had broken into MD’s records and, thus, knew exactly who Reaper was. Then MM asked if she had any way of contacting Reaper, and if she was interested in ensuring that Talon’s resources be used to _benefit_ the world’s populace instead of causing the global war AO wanted, or harvesting wealth the way V planned.

“Peace is good for business,” MM said when she asked about his(?) intentions.

And that’s how she became a conspirator allied with the omnic Maximilien, whose goal was to eliminate the other heads of Talon and use the organization to spread wealth, leveraging widespread prosperity into omnic rights.

Contact through the comm she’d given Reaper was infrequent at best, and usually filtered through her mate, but a comment here and there was enough to tell her that he was recovering his memories and healing from the trauma he’d suffered. With Maximilien’s help, she arranged “accidents” for a handful more Talon heads, and the rest of them decreed that they would convene in Venice during Carnival to sort out a new balance of power, given how many deaths there had been. It was exactly the sort of opportunity she’d been waiting for, and the perfect Christmas gift for Reaper – it wasn’t safe to even _think_ of him as being anyone else – and his family. But speaking of family…

It took a few days of digging and arranging, but she managed to finagle an assignment in Canada, an hour or two away from a truly breathtaking resort. Then she made her mate a week-long reservation, bought him plane tickets, and dropped an obscenely generous cred card (along with the various confirmations) in the mail to him. She’d only be able to spend a couple of days with Jesse, but she hadn’t seen him in _months_ and she needed to nuzzle her mate and coo over him or she was going to kill someone.

When Jesse called her, late the next night, she thought for a second that he’d already gotten the package, but no – he was calling to tell her that his pseudo-dad was _starving to death_ and oh yeah, their grocery bills were getting uncomfortable. For a long moment Sombra just covered her face with her hands, because how could she tell her mate that his father figure – and her hero – _ate people_ on a regular basis to keep healthy? In the end, she assured him she’d take care of it and then went and found Talon’s closest supply drop. It didn’t take much to find someone willing to hand-deliver a postcard for two hundred untraceable credits, and then she kept a digital eye on the office’s security feed.

A good thing she did, because _somehow_ the tactical mastermind of Blackwatch forgot that _security cameras_ existed. She was deleting footage almost before it could be recorded, and as far as she could tell, managed to keep Talon from finding out anything had happened.

It took three more days for V to figure out the supply drop had gone silent, and two to find a couple of goons to go investigate. Once more she kept a digital ear on the office, but this time, she was meeting with Maximilien when the cameras announced unauthorized entry by… _Soldier 76?_ Her expression got the omnic’s attention, but she was able to brush it off as something she was dealing with.

Then an emergency call came through to him(?), and the sounds that emerged from his(?) phone made her blush. In awkward silence they listened to two men having sex, and when Maximilien demanded they identify themselves, she reluctantly opened a screen showing the security footage she was already deleting. The omnic didn’t ask any uncomfortable questions, thankfully, and almost cheerfully decided that he(?) would blame everything on one of Soldier 76’s classic raids. Then he(?) _ruined her Christmas surprise_ by inviting the man formerly known as Reaper to Venice for Carnival. She finished up the call, finished erasing the security footage, and went back to plotting Talon’s downfall with Maximilien.

Not even a day later, Maximilien sent her a small package with an omnic-encoded note. It was an update for Reaper’s nanite swarm, one that would help slow the cellular decay and define skin cells as something the swarm should reclaim, rather than just letting him shed. Sombra tucked it away to bring with her; in a week, she could pass it to Jesse and he would pass it to its intended recipient. But most importantly, in a week she could show her mate _exactly_ how much she’d missed him.


	4. Unexpected lessons

~Hanzo~

The hotel was expensive enough that he winced as he slid his cred bar across the counter, although he could afford it. That wasn’t the issue; the issue was that it was _wasteful_ to stay here – but he was buying more than a room. He was buying protection from prying eyes.

As the concierge processed his payment and programmed a room key for him, Hanzo let his eyes slide over the hotel lobby. It was late afternoon, the period calculated to have the fewest people around. Most of the guests would be out on the ski slopes, or visiting attractions, or shopping. The only other person in the lobby was a man standing by the elevators, almost completely hidden behind the decorative plants and talking to someone on the phone. Hanzo was turning back to the concierge, dismissing the American, when-

“…gotta track down that damned Shimada and-” A pause, then a bark of laughter. “Nah, he doesn’t know. Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”

The elevator arrived; Hanzo had a brief glimpse of shaggy brown hair before the man stepped into the elevator and out of sight.

So. It would seem he had an enemy, one who had managed to find him but was not yet aware that his quarry was forewarned. This week would prove interesting, indeed.

 

* * *

 

It was three days – three nervous, skulking, high-strung days – before he caught a glimpse of his quarry again. As he traversed the lobby, he heard a familiar bark of laughter and scanned for – there! His would-be assassin in a coat that had to have been purchased from one of the shops, venturing out into the snowy outdoors. In a heartbeat Hanzo was on his trail, peering through the window to be sure the American wouldn’t see him before slipping outside as well. It was late morning, relatively high traffic, and he used the scattered guests as cover while spinning and discarding plans for how he would take out this threat without drawing attention to himself.

An unlucky break in the flow of people meant that suddenly, there was no one between himself and his target – he could see the man’s face clearly in profile, because he was…turning to a darker-skinned woman and kissing her?

Quickly, he ducked out of sight and found a position where he could spy on them.

The man appeared to be roughly his own age, but with the advantages of height and weight. A typical American, about two meters tall and somewhere between 20 and 30 kilos heavier, with shaggy (but groomed) facial hair to match the brown mop on his head. Possible mixed blood, as his skin was darker than expected for a Caucasian man. The woman, to judge by her appearance (and her accent as she purred an endearment that suggested the two were more involved than simple flirtation), was of Central or South American origins. Although she was half a head shorter than him and he had the advantage of weight, he found himself regarding her as the bigger threat while the man…

…there was something about the man that Hanzo found _attractive_ , and in frustrated fury, he retreated back to the lobby of the resort and stalked to the elevators. How could he consider that man, a man who meant to kill him, _attractive?_ It made no sense. And furthermore, why him? Why not the woman, whose features were clearly more refined? Why did he see _her_ as the threat and not her…what was he, what were _they?_ Boyfriend, fiancé, husband? He fumed all the way back to his room and changed angrily into attire more appropriate for the fitness center, sullenly wondering why, of all things, he wanted to _impress_ the man sent to kill him.

 

* * *

 

Two days passed infuriatingly. Hanzo spied on the pair as often as he could, eavesdropping on their conversations whenever possible and hating himself for every second. It was clear that Jesse and Sombra were very much in love and committed to each other, and even expecting a child. _That_ news had been surprisingly hard to take, and Hanzo had retreated to the resort bar to drown his aching heart in sake…or whatever the bar had to offer.

He resumed spying on them the next day, wondering what a beautiful woman like her saw in the pudgy, overweight American. Wondering what _he_ saw in the pudgy, overweight American. But even more than that, wondering why she was leaving that afternoon and he was not. Hating himself, he watched as they hugged and kissed and murmured endearments to each other, lamenting the time they would be apart – especially Christmas – and promising to stay in touch. As Sombra hefted her bag and walked out, Jesse’s expression drained of all joy and turned to a loneliness that hurt to look at, like a dagger buried in his stomach, and Hanzo quickly retreated to the bar before the other man could see him.

He knew what it was like, feeling the bite of loneliness, and he wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around the bigger man and comfort him – and that made him _furious_ at himself. So he drank, and he listened to the music playing over the speakers, and he wallowed in unhappiness and frustration and self-loathing. When he recognized one of the songs, he gave in and sang along, taking a tiny spark of pride in how his voice caressed the notes. A silly hobby, his father had called it. Unbecoming of his heir. Even now, the conditioning of his childhood held fast and he only permitted himself to sing occasionally. When the song ended, he stood and made his slightly-unsteady way through the arch to the restaurant, expecting it to be empty at this early hour.

The startled face of the American was the first thing he saw, the man tucked into a booth holding the menu as though he’d forgotten it was in his hands. Only then did he realize that the bar was clearly visible from that booth and he had been the only one in it, therefore Jesse had not only heard him sing but knew it was _him_ singing. Getting an early dinner to counteract the hangover he would otherwise awaken with was out of the question, now, and he averted his gaze as he wove his way past the booth.

“That was beautiful.”

The words were quiet, reverent, and Hanzo’s heart squeezed at having the man’s resonant drawl directed at him for a change. He stopped, eyes closed, and took a breath before saying, “Thank you.”

“What’s your name?”

 _This is how I die,_ Hanzo thought. Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He would lay himself down at the feet of the man sent to kill him, like an offering on the altar, a sacrifice to futility. “Hanzo,” he said in a low voice.

The American shifted. “Well, Hanzo, it’s mighty lonely eating by myself. If you’re hungry, would you care to join me? We could keep each other company,” he added, “and it sounds like you need the company as much as I do.”

Hanzo declined to respond to that, but he did turn and slowly sit in the booth opposite the illogically attractive man. “Thank you,” he sighed. Then, as a form of surrender, “Jesse.”

If Jesse had been surprised that Hanzo knew his name, he didn’t show it. “Menu?”

He accepted the folded sheet. “Thank you.”

In silence, he studied the menu until the waitress came by. Jesse placed his order, and then Hanzo quietly gave his as well. She collected the menus and left, and the two of them were again alone in awkward silence.

Jesse took a deep breath. “You’ve been watching me,” he said softly.

Gently.

Like he knew Hanzo would want to bolt and was saying ‘no, stay’.

“My pumpkin didn’t notice, but I did.” Jesse laughed dryly. “I always know when someone’s watching me. So, you’ve been watching me, but you never said hello. Now, another man might think you had something nefarious planned, but...”

He pinned Hanzo with soft, soulful brown eyes.

“I know you don’t mean me no harm.”

“Indeed, I do not.”

It was dumb. He shouldn’t have said that. The American was going to kill him, and he couldn’t even bring himself to fight back. He should leave, run away and find another place to hide-

“Were you singing for me?”

His eyes flew open and he gaped like a koi. Then the pun hit him and he rubbed his eyes in drunken annoyance at himself. “Yes. No. You have your...pumpkin. You would hardly be interested in one such as me.”

Shit, he’d said that out loud.

“Did you _not_ hear yourself sing?” Jesse asked, eyebrows raised in astonishment. “I’d have to be _dead_ to not be interested after hearing that.”

He was interested? In singing, the most frivolous waste of time and energy possible? Hanzo felt the warmth of the alcohol transmute into the heat of anger. “You mock me,” he snarled, flushing at the way the words slurred slightly. “I know not how you found me, but I will not run. Kill me, and end my dishonor.”

Now it was Jesse looking furious. “Kill you? What in tarnation are you talking about? Why the _hell_ would I be here to kill _you?”_

“I heard you on the phone,” Hanzo spat accusingly. “You said you had to track me down.”

“I’ve never seen you in my life,” Jesse countered. “The only Hanzo I know of is Hanzo _Shimada!”_

“Exactly!”

In stunned silence, they stared at each other.

“You...” Jesse started in a confused voice. “You’re Genji’s brother?”

“You...” Hanzo swallowed. “You know my brother?”

“It was him I was talking about tracking down. Have to tell him that I settled down and we’re expecting.”

Hanzo buried his face in his hands. “Truly, my shame is complete. I have made a fool of myself once by mooning over a man who is happy in his relationship, twice by accusing him of being here to kill me, and three times by confessing to a friend of the brother I did my best to kill in accordance with the clan’s wishes. Everything I have tried to do has led only to more shame and dishonor. Perhaps you should kill me after all.”

“Fat chance of that,” Jesse muttered. “Look, Hanzo, Genji’s told me some of the sick shit you both had forced on you as kids. I ain’t blaming you for what you did. Genji’s forgiven you, so I got no place to be angry. I actually think it’s kinda funny you thought I was here to kill you, and...” He trailed off, cheeks faintly flushed. “I’d...like to hear you sing some more.”

For a long moment, all Hanzo could do was stare with his mouth open. Then the waitress returned with their food and drink and he shut his mouth with a snap, doing his best to look as though he had _not_ just gotten utterly flustered. Once she had left, he buried his gaze in his plate.

“If you truly wish to hear my singing,” he said quietly, “then for you, I will sing every song I know and cleanse my honor in servitude.”

They ate in silence that was sometimes awkward and sometimes relaxed, and when the bill came, Jesse told the waitress to bill his account and that was that.

“Come back to my suite with me,” Jesse said as he heaved himself out of the booth to stand and offer Hanzo a hand, which he ignored. “We got a lot to talk about, I think.”

Hanzo nodded, still drunk but grim, and silently followed the American to the elevators and up to his _impressively_ opulent suite, where he sank down onto the couch with a groan.

“Thank god there’s just the one,” he sighed, both hands on his rounded stomach. “I don’t even want to think about how big it’s gonna get. I already feel huge.”

Confused and off-balance, Hanzo lowered himself into a chair. “One what?”

Jesse smiled softly. “One _baby_. I told you we were expecting. Still a couple months away, and I’ll be honest with you, I still can’t hardly believe it’s happening.”

“But...” Hanzo frowned. “But you are a _man_.”

“I’m an _omega,_ ” was the cheerful correction. “I’m a man, sure, but I’ve got the baby-making bits. My pumpkin, she’s an alpha like you and-”

“A _what?”_ Hanzo wasn’t sure what was more disturbing: the term he was not familiar with, the fact that it apparently applied to him, or that the _baby-making man_ had somehow learned something about him that he himself was unaware of.

Jesse frowned right back. “You...you don’t know what you are?”

“I am a _true_ man.” The words tumbled out reflexively, bringing clouds of memory. Countless times he had been told that he was one of the rare _true_ men and he needed to find a _true_ woman who would be worthy of him. Only now did it occur to him that no one had ever told him what _made_ him a ‘true’ man or how to identify a ‘true’ woman. He swallowed shame, certain that Jesse was about to mock him, but when he met those soft brown eyes he found only...compassion?

“So...you don’t even know why you’re attracted to me,” he said gently. “Jesus. No one ever told you.”

“Told me _what?”_

“Bathroom’s in there,” Jesse said, pointing to a door. “There’s a basket of little...looks like round band-aids. You’ve got two moles, or birthmarks, or whatever. Dark spots above your dick.”

“The eyes of the dragon,” he supplied numbly. How did a stranger know that? Had Genji told him?

“Eyes of the dragon. Right then. Put one patch over each of them - just peel the back off and stick it on. Take a couple if your bathroom doesn’t have patches. Your scent’s nice and all, sort of gingery, but I’m a mated man and I’m pregnant and it’s messing with my hormones.”

Now that it had been mentioned, Hanzo _had_ wondered about the way he seemed to smell ginger whenever he was....interested...in a woman or the occasional, puzzling man. Instead of answering, he obeyed the American’s directions and went to the bathroom to press round adhesive pads over the two marks he was now very self-conscious about. Why did he even have these pads? Why did the pads _exist?_ What else hadn’t he been told?

“I apologize for my unintentional rudeness,” he said stiffly as he emerged from the bathroom.

Jesse waved it off. “You didn’t know. No harm done. So, I’m guessing you had a private tutor? Very sheltered upbringing?”

Hanzo nodded stiffly and reclaimed his chair.

“Right. So. There’s a small percentage of people - official numbers are about ten percent and split evenly, but it feels like a lot less in everyday life - who have...extra genders.” Jesse gave him a wry smile. “I guess Japan hides it a lot more than the US does. Omegas are people like me with baby-making bits. A second set, if they’re female. Alphas have....special dicks. Big, bumpy, crazy shapes that only come out when they smell an aroused omega. Lots of alphas and omegas hide what they are. I know I did, and my pumpkin didn’t even know until she was almost an adult. But all of us have scent glands that announce our arousal. Me, I smell kind of like sweet oranges. You smell like ginger. My pumpkin, she smells like cocoa powder and almonds.”

Hanzo opted to not ask how a woman could have a penis and still be a woman, but he did make a note to do some discreet searching on the internet once he was sober.

“Now, alphas like protecting people. And they like showing off for omegas somehow. But if there’s a real threat, they’ll choose making sure their people are okay over taking out the threat. Omegas like me,” Jesse continued, somehow sounding threatening and proud at the same time, “we go for taking out the threat. Unless we’re pregnant. _Everyone_ protects a pregnant omega. Apparently the _I’m pregnant_ hormones are really soothing to smell.”

Now that it had been put into words, Hanzo realized that it was true. He had been drawn to the American not out of sexual desire (although there was some of that), but out of a desire to _protect_. As soon as that revelation hit him, he realized another long-buried truth: he had felt that same intense desire to _protect_ for his brother.

His brother, who he had done his best to kill.

His brother, who had _forgiven_ him for the attempt.

His brother, who he could never forgive himself for harming.

The alcohol undid him; he found himself crying, weeping freely over what he’d done to his younger brother, the brother he should have been protecting. He was a monster, a failure, and he didn’t even realize he’d crawled over to the couch until he laid his head in Jesse’s lap and felt the American’s - the _omega’s_ \- hand stroking his hair. That deep, soothing voice rumbled, but he could not make out the words over the ugly sobs leaving his body. A part of him wanted to be ashamed of his weakness, but he could not spare a thought for that over the recurring pain of realizing that he had nearly killed the one person he should have died to keep safe.

Eventually, the grief tired of shaking him in its jaws and dropped him into sleep.

 

* * *

 

When Hanzo awoke, he was aware first of the muted pounding in his head and spared a moment to be grateful his hangover was not worse. Then he realized he was being held by someone, someone big and soft and warm with strong arms, someone who made him feel _safe_ in a way he’d never experienced before.

Then he realized he was wearing only his underwear, and remembered what had happened the previous evening.

Jesse. Alphas and omegas. The discovery that he had been kept ignorant of his own nature, and the harsh suspicion that he had been forced to kill Genji for the ‘crime’ of having been born with the capacity to bear children.

But Genji had forgiven him.

It didn’t matter, he decided as Jesse stirred in his sleep. His honor was, if anything, more _deeply_ stained for having tried to kill the one he should have been protecting and he did not deserve the comfort Jesse’s body offered, much less the comfort he had already received.

Gingerly, he freed himself from the American’s embrace and slipped out of bed.

“Hanzo?”

He froze. “I do not deserve your compassion,” he answered quietly, not turning to face the hurt he would undoubtedly see on Jesse’s face. “Thank you for opening my eyes. I will take my leave of you now, and bother you no more.”

Protests, he was expecting. Perhaps a plea, or an argument that he was deserving after all.

“You’re gonna leave a pregnant omega alone?” The words were cool, with an edge of disappointment. “After you promised to sing for me?”

He had not been expecting _that_.

“I...”

“I know what you did to Genji,” Jesse continued in that same cool tone. “I know how hard they fought to keep him alive, and how hard he struggled to adjust. I held him and didn’t say a god-damned word as he cried in the middle of the night. I listened to him talk about his family, and his upbringing, and _you_. I was with him every step of the way as he healed, his adopted brother, helping him come to terms with the betrayal and the fact that he was more machine than man.” Rustling sounds hinted that he’d sat up in bed. “You didn’t just almost take his life, Hanzo. You took his _future_. He didn’t know if he’d ever want to start a family, but he doesn’t have that choice now. _You_ took it away from him. Last night, you were crying over how bad you felt, but this morning? It’s not about him. It’s about _you_. Genji struggled to forgive you, Hanzo. He hated you for a while, wanted to take from you what you’d taken from him, but he put the anger aside and moved on. Pain never makes anything better, it just brings more pain. Genji wants _you_ to put the anger aside and move on, too. If you leave this room to go punish yourself, you’re being a selfish son of a bitch and I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll track Genji down and tell him all about my mate and our unborn child, and I’ll tell him that you care more about yourself than you do about him. That you don’t _want_ to atone for what you did, and you’re no kind of alpha at all.”

It was astounding, Hanzo thought through the beat of his heart thudding through his trembling body, how efficiently Jesse could flay him down to his bones without ever raising his voice.

“If you really want to atone,” Jesse said gently, “then it’s not about punishing yourself. It’s about being _better_.”

“I promised to sing for you,” Hanzo said shakily. “And your alpha, your...pumpkin...is not here to protect you. Therefore, it falls to me to stand by your side and be your companion for the remainder of your stay here. I will leave this room, but only to shower and find my clothes.”

“Good.”

More rustling, and then warm arms wrapped around his torso and the plush bulge of Jesse’s belly - his _pregnant_ belly - pressed against his back.

“I’ll order us some breakfast,” Jesse said, his voice warm and shivery against Hanzo’s ear. “I really do want to hear you sing, Hanzo. It’s the most beautiful god-damned thing I’ve heard in my life, and if I weren’t mated and pregnant you’d have this whole room smelling like someone peeled a dozen oranges.”

That made a curl of warmth flutter in his belly, and somehow it felt like a lifeline flung to a drowning man. He could cast off the shameful trappings of his youth and be born anew, a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Someone worthy of compassion. Of respect. Of _happiness_.

And he’d do it by protecting Jesse, by being everything an alpha _should_ be.

A _true_ man.

They showered and had breakfast, and then Jesse dragged him to another room in the suite with a _breathtaking_ view of the mountains. There, bundled up in a love seat, Hanzo serenaded the pregnant omega sprawled half across him until his throat was feeling strained and Jesse was sound asleep.

They had lunch when Jesse woke up, and went for a walk in the afternoon. They went to the shops and had dinner, and Hanzo sang every song he knew while Jesse looked like some obscure god of fertility receiving worship. When they went to bed, Hanzo had to swallow a thrill of nervousness at the forbidden act of climbing into another man’s bed. Once they were settled under the covers, though, he found it to be an experience that shook him to his core.

He wanted this. He _wanted_ to take this man in his arms and share the comfort of their bodies. It wasn’t even anything sexual, although he could tell that his ‘dragon’ would happily awaken for Jesse. No, it was the simple comfort of holding someone that he cared about, sharing warmth and physical closeness, asking nothing and offering everything, having everything offered in return with nothing asked of him.

This, he thought as he drifted off to sleep, was what he’d been seeking his whole life.

He was in love.

 

* * *

 

It was agony, helping Jesse pack. Knowing that the omega would be leaving, going back to his family and that he would be celebrating Christmas - although Americans apparently did not see it as the romantic holiday it was in Japan - alone. His consolation was that Jesse insisted on exchanging contact information.

“You’ll do great,” the bigger man murmured as they waited for the taxi that would take him to the airport. “I know you will, because I’m gonna text you when I land safe and you’ll want to have something good to tell me.”

That startled a laugh out of Hanzo, the first to have left his lips in far too long.

“I will miss you,” he said somberly. “You are a treasure and I owe you a debt I am not sure I can repay.”

“Never say never,” Jesse countered cheerfully. “Oops. That’s my cab.”

Hanzo loaded Jesse’s bags into the trunk while the man climbed inside. The cab pulled away and he watched it go, feeling more and more bereft as it shrank into the distance, until his phone buzzed.

It was a text from Jesse: Matta ne!

_See you soon._

Suddenly filled with warmth, Hanzo decided to visit the shops. He may be spending Christmas by himself, but he no longer felt alone. Not when Jesse was a text away.

 

* * *

 

~Jesse~

Ana, unsurprisingly, was waiting for him at the airport. He hugged her tightly, glad to have her protective motherly presence nearby again, and together they fetched his luggage and hailed a taxi.

“I did not remember you bringing two bags,” she said once the omnic-driven cab was on its way.

Jesse laughed. “Sombra and I did some shopping while we were there. Christmas gifts for everyone, and some clothes. That reminds me...” He dug out his phone and texted Hanzo - _Safe and secure with my omega ‘mom’_ \- before sending one to Angela to let her know they were on their way. Then he opened up the album of pictures he and Sombra had taken during their three days together.

“She’s beautiful,” Ana murmured, flicking through the photos. “I can see that she loves you very much. I look forward to meeting her after Masquerade.”

Somberly, he put away his phone. “Yeah. We really need to make plans for that when we get home.”

When the taxi pulled up to Angela’s chateau, Jack strode out wearing sunglasses to take the bags while Ana helped Jesse out of the car. The instant he got into the house, everyone gathered around him in a big group hug to welcome their vulnerable omega back and then somehow they all wound up sprawled on the extra-long couch with limbs draped everywhere.

“Sombra says hi,” Jesse started, patting whatever body parts were under his hands. “She cooed over my belly and we talked baby names.”

“That’s not _all_ you did,” Gabe teased, causing them all to laugh.

“Nope. But I ain’t telling _those_ stories,” he countered loftily.

Ana hugged him briefly. “Baby names?”

“Yeah. We still haven’t settled on a single name if it’s a girl, but if it’s a boy...Michael Mateo McCree.”

Jack grunted. “You’re going to saddle your son with initials that spell _MMM?_ ”

“We both agreed on Michael,” Jesse protested, “and Sombra destroyed her legal identity, so I’m the only one with a surname, and we didn’t want his initials to spell _mom_ or anything. So...M. Just M. And Mateo means _gift from god_ so...”

“It’s a good name, mijo,” Gabe said softly.

“Thanks,” he answered in a whisper. Then he cleared his throat. “Uh. Speaking of gifts, Sombra gave me something to give to you.”

Everyone shifted so Jesse could pull out the small, flat package and hand it over. Gabe opened it and unfolded a piece of paper with a short note written in a nearly-perfect hand.

“You spoke with me recently,” he read, “but before that I was unknown to you. Never the less, it was with my aid that you were able to...pull yourself together. This little snack should curb your insatiable appetite. I look forward to seeing you in Venice.”

“Babe?” Jack asked softly when his husband seemed to withdraw into himself.

“I was smoke,” Gabe answered in a tight voice. “I couldn’t make my smoke turn into a body. Then one day they added _something_ to the air, and once it had mixed in with me, I could pull myself into a solid shape. _Someone_ in Talon wants to keep me on their good side...or beholden to them.”

“I will examine it,” Angela declared crisply, plucking the package from his hands. “We can make a decision once we know what this dubious gift actually is. Oh - there’s another paper.” She plucked it out and handed it back to her mate.

This time, Jesse recognized the purple scrawl. “It’s from Sombra,” he said gleefully.

“It’s the location and time of the meeting in Venice,” Gabe said absently. “Your mate’s managed to pick off a fair number of Talon heads, if that’s what this list is. Look, there’s several sets of initials crossed off.”

“MM is circled,” Ana pointed out. “And there are arrows pointing to MD and AO.”

“MD...” Gabe trailed off, frowning. “Jack, remember what that omnic said? _We had to take her word_.”

“I remember. What about it?”

“I was in Moira’s lab when the black goo exploded on me.”

Angela growled.

“So if MD is Moira,” Jack said slowly, “who’s AO?”

Softly, Jesse said, “Akande Ogundimu.”

“Someone order pizza,” Gabe said grimly. “We have plans to make.”

 

* * *

 

No one wanted to start talking until the pizza got there, so Angela took the package into her lab and Jesse dragged his bags into the spare room to unpack and hide presents. He’d almost forgotten about Hanzo until his phone vibrated. The alpha had sent him a picture of himself with an absolutely _delicious-_ looking cake with strawberries all over it, and he looked...pleased.

Pleased, the way Sombra looked pleased when she’d managed to provide for her mate.

But Hanzo wasn’t actually _giving_ him the cake, so what was- oh. He’d told Hanzo he’d do great, and Hanzo was _proving_ that he’d done great. He hadn’t sunk into despair, and he was smiling.

Hanzo was _flirting_ with him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted it to stop.

Well, it didn’t _have_ to stop, did it? Jack and Gabe and Angela were all mates...

He’d talk with Sombra. See what came out of it. In the meantime, the pizza was here and someone was shouting his name.

Jesse texted back a simple smile and put his phone away.

 

* * *

 

~Sombra~

With the loss of Reaper - and the extra-curricular work she’d been doing with Maximilien - Sombra found herself promoted to being the spider at the center of a much bigger web. While none of the surviving Talon heads made any overt moves before the Venice meeting, nearly everyone was jockeying for position behind the scenes. Alliances were formed and broken in secret, some of the most powerful people in the world milling like frightened sheep unsure of where the wolf was.

It was delicious.

She’d assisted with AO’s escape from prison and discovered that not only was he Akande Ogundimu, the current holder of the title Doomfist, but that he personally approved of her ‘initiative’. He took to demanding her presence while he met with various of the other heads, whether out of the aristocratic habit of having servants attending him or whether he somehow thought he was buying favor with her. Often, he commandeered Widowmaker as well for the combination of beauty and bodyguard.

It didn’t take long to figure out that she was - or had been - Amelié Lacroix. _That_ was information she sent to Jesse, along with all the medical records she could scrape out of MD’s servers. Learning that MD was Moira O’Deorain was...chilling. When she hand-wrote Gabriel’s ‘invitation’ to Venice, she drew attention to those sets of initials.

Ogundimu and O’Deorain were - along with Vialli - the ones maneuvering most aggressively to become the singular head of Talon during the meeting in Venice. That meant standing off to the side during a lot of video meetings where they sniped at each other, trying to make their rival lose face in front of the other heads. Reaper was a common subject, Ogundimu taking every opportunity to mock the medically-inclined scientist for having had Gabriel Reyes at her disposal, and losing him.

“You had better hope he _is_ actually dead,” the Irish woman retorted coldly. “Because if he is not, he’s going to find a way to kill us all.”

“Unlike you,” he announced with smug confidence, “I am not afraid of a man who is already dead.”

The other heads laughed while O’Deorain glowered.

Sombra never so much as cracked a smile and, when Ogundimu asked her opinion later, asserted with a lot of partially-falsified information that the structural integrity of Reaper’s body had been failing and that he was most assuredly dispersed to the tides, never to pull himself together again.

The mission to Canada, with the brief side-trip to visit her mate, was the highlight of the Christmas season. They caught up on Jesse’s pregnancy, on Ana and Jack and Gabriel, and Sombra shared what it had been like in Talon. They strolled, shopped, ate, and discussed baby names while curled around each other in bed, just reveling in each other’s scents. Knowing she would be leaving so soon sucked, but Sombra assured her cowboy that after March - after the Talon heads met in Venice during Carnival - she would be free to come home again.

“You better be,” he mock-threatened between kisses. “Angela says you’ll be a mom by the end of March.”

Sombra kissed his swollen belly. “Be good in there,” she told her unborn child. Then she looked up. “Did Angela say anything about milk for the baby?”

“She did, but you’re not gonna like it.” Jesse kissed her breasts teasingly. “According to her, you’re gonna handle that aspect of it.”

Sombra sat up in indignation. “I’m _what?”_

“You’re gonna start making milk,” he repeated, trying not to smile but failing. “Although she says it’s hormone-related and not something the mating bond does, so either you’ll start plumping up after this, or it won’t happen until we see each other again.”

“Hopefully not now,” she groaned. “I don’t want to be lactating _in Talon_. If anyone catches me leaking, there will be a _lot_ of questions I can’t answer.”

Her mate’s answer to that didn’t involve words.

Thankfully, the weeks after that mission proved that her secret wouldn’t be threatened by lactation, and she was able to concentrate on channeling her worry into getting her digital fingers on every part of Talon. Brief messages to Gabriel let her coordinate with him, and although for safety’s sake he didn’t share the plans he was making, she made sure he knew every bit of the security measures she was aware of. This included the fact that Widowmaker would be present, and where she would be stationed. She meant it as a warning, but Gabriel’s response of ‘we’ll take care of her, too’ was less than reassuring.

 

* * *

 

~Jack~

The best part of Christmas, Jack felt, had always been the delight on the faces of his loved ones. Watching them smile and knowing that _he’d done that_ , he’d made them happy. Especially his husband, who normally played aloof. It was a secret game for them, a competition, two alphas each trying to act all cool and composed while doing their best to make their husband dissolve into warm delight.

In the early years of their marriage, that usually resulted in Gabe beaming at the feast Jack cooked: all the traditional foods, and all their favorites, including his husband’s beloved street corn. But then came the presents, and Jack couldn’t maintain his composure in the warm and snuggly face of the matching pajamas his sweetheart inevitably made them, or the smart suits that made them both look so good. They’d change into the pajamas and feed each other and typically fall asleep on the couch with a fire going on the holoscreen, full and happy and tangled together. That didn’t change much after Angela joined them, except that there was more food and more clothes and more limbs sprawled in a contented pile.

But the closer they got to the end of Overwatch, the harder it became to reach the point of joy. The good food and the comfort and companionship only helped ease the stress, and that last year, the three of them barely smiled.

Christmas with Jesse and Ana was a return of that joy, multiplied. They had _three_ omegas to cook for, _three_ omegas to sew soft and fluffy pajamas for, _three_ omegas to form an overstuffed cuddlepile with. There was a small pile of presents for Jesse’s baby, clothes and blankets and useful items that Jack never would have imagined but Ana clearly remembered. Angela woke Jack and Gabe early in the morning, long before sunrise, to drag them into her lab. They sat there, yawning and half-awake, while she administered nanites to both of them and then shooed them both back to bed. When they awoke properly, they discovered that she’d managed to deliver the first Christmas gifts: Jack’s sight was back to normal, and Gabe - his beloved husband, his darling, his worn and battered Churrito - had clear, healthy skin.

When Gabe realized that he didn’t have to scrape dead skin cells off his face, off his body, the _smile_ that spread across his face made him look decades younger. The pre-breakfast romp he led them on left them all _feeling_ decades younger.

Breakfast began with luring the other two out, coffee and bacon and sweet things baking. Gabe practically assaulted them with the pajamas he’d made them before they’d even finished settling down in the living room, bouncing up to everyone in turn with flat boxes or soft bundles. Laughing, they took turns retreating to change into the fluffy clothes and then settling in for real with coffee and breakfast while the holographic tree twinkled at them, all the ornaments that had been coded for them over the years and which no one had thought survived the explosions - but Angela, their sweet and clever dove, had kept a backup in her off-base residence and they spent a warm and comfortable time reminiscing as they all spotted favorites.

Then, of course, came the presents. No one had gotten anyone else more than one or two - with the exception of the baby - but they were more than any of them had gotten in years and there wasn’t a single dry eye left among them by the time everything had been opened. After everyone had recovered, Jack retreated to the kitchen and occasionally recruited one of the others to assist with a specific task as he cooked, but for the most part it was him humming happily as he worked his magic to the background of the Christmas movies the others were watching. Gabe slipped out to help him set the table, silencing his protests with kisses. The fact that his skin still hadn’t been clogged with dead cells filled him with such elation that Jack couldn’t resist that confident-yet-innocent smile, and with many soft touches and kisses they arranged dishes and flatware until everything was ready-

-and then Jack pinned his very willing husband in a corner and gave him the gift of fellatio he hadn’t been comfortable with receiving while his cells were still dying almost as soon as they formed.

When the movie ended and the omegas filed in with sounds of culinary anticipation, Jack was smugly seated next to his dazed and pliable darling, and their dove gave them a proud smile. There was almost too much food to fit on the table, but no one minded - dishes were passed and shuffled for seconds and thirds, and while Jack ate his fill, the real feast was the joy and delight on everyone’s faces. They adjourned to the couch for movies and cuddles afterwards, which of course turned into naps.

No one minded.

 

* * *

 

The day after Christmas dawned lazily, Jack nestled between his husband and their mate, warm and loved. It was a quiet morning, with everyone heating up sweet leftovers for breakfast and just luxuriating in the ambient joy from yesterday. Everyone except Gabe, who was _bouncy_ with exuberance over the fact that his skin was _still_ clear. It infected the rest of them as they woke up and realized that the cellular decay must have been a much bigger drain on his energy than they’d thought - emotionally, physically, or both.

Probably both, now that he thought about it.

In any case, it was a comfortably cheerful mid-morning cuddlepile on the couch that they were enjoying when the conversation went from planning a baby shower for Jesse to planning the Venice mission. Gabe described the lavish Red Death costume he planned to make for himself, and Jack murmured teasing endearments to his darling theater nerd between little, nipping kisses. Said nerd, shamelessly sprawled across the laps of both his mates, talked them through the dramatic scene he’d planned: how he was going to follow Ogundimu into the room with all the Talon heads before unmasking himself and killing them all. Then he mentioned Widowmaker.

“Amelié?” Ana sat up, startled. “Gabriel, if she will be there, we _must_ bring her back with us. Angela has been working on methods to undo what has been done to her.”

Jack’s gut squirmed. Although Gerard and his wife were betas, ordinary people, they had been close enough that he had mentally adopted them. If there was a chance to save Amelié, they had to take it. Ana was arguing to Gabe that she would not need protection from the sniper who had caused her to lose her eye and nearly taken her from them, but the former commander of Blackwatch was having none of it.

“Sombra has it under control,” he insisted. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll retrieve her later, when it’s safe.”

“Gabriel-”

Jack felt the tension in his husband’s body, and his alpha instincts agreed - to let their precious friend face such danger again was unacceptable. But at the same time, those same instincts raged at the idea of not rescuing Amelié.

“I’ll go with her,” he announced, his voice firm and commanding. The Strike-Commander voice that hadn’t left his throat in years, the voice that - when used properly - never failed to out-alpha his alpha mate.

In his arms, Gabe stiffened. Silence reigned in the living room for a long minute before his darling relaxed again, melting into Jack’s embrace with his cheek nestled against his husband’s chest. “Okay,” he murmured. “Keep her safe, Elote.”

Jack nuzzled the soft fuzz of Gabe’s hair, which hadn’t had a chance to grow out because the follicles kept dying after a few days. “I promise, babe,” he rumbled back. “We’ll bring Amelié back safely. You know I was looking forward to cleaning up after you, but...”

Gabe nodded. Adopted family was more important than vengeance.

“So...” Jesse drummed nervously on Ana’s arm, curled around his waist to rest on his baby bump. “I guess it’ll just be me and Angela here, waiting for the rest of you...?”

Everyone on the couch stiffened. Someone spat “Unacceptable!” but Jack wasn’t sure who.

“Not that we don’t have faith in you, dove,” Gabe told their mate firmly, “but Jesse’s _pregnant_. He needs more protection than just one person, or his mate will skin us when she finds out.”

Angela looked uncomfortable, but nodded. “Particularly as I do not kill.”

“Who’s still around?” Jack asked. “Can we get in touch with Reinhardt?”

Although no one had ever figured out the big Crusader’s type because of him being asexual, there was no question in anyone’s mind that he was as fearsome a protector as a pregnant omega could ask for.

“He’s traveling with my youngest sister,” Angela informed him. “She keeps me updated, but the way they’re traveling does not lend itself to being speedy or discreet and I have no way to reach back out to her.”

There were two unhappy alpha grumbles at that.

Jesse cleared his throat. “When I was in that resort, after my pumpkin left, I kinda...met an alpha, and he was sort of...into me. I’m sure he’d be willing to put whatever he’s doing on hold and come protect me,” he finished almost shyly.

Two omegas and two alphas all exchanged the same wary, skeptical, but also guardedly-hopeful look.

“Tell us more, mijo,” Gabe said slowly.

“Kinda funny story, actually,” Jesse started. Gabe gave him a look that said ‘get on with it’, and he cleared his throat again. “Uh. Anyway, he overheard me talking and thought I was talking about _him_ and also that I’d been sent to kill him or something, so our first conversation was...exciting. But he’s good with a sword, _damn_ good, and discreet, and I know he wouldn’t let anything happen to me because he’s...uh...kind of got a whole honor-debt-redemption thing going on in his head.”

“Sounds good so far,” Gabe said reluctantly, “but I _know_ you, and you’re holding something back because you think I won’t be happy to hear it. So out with it, mijo. What are you not telling us?”

Jesse flushed. “That’s...usually you just say somethin’ like _I smell bullshit_ or _now tell me the rest_. But. Uh. He thought I was talking about him because he heard me say _Shimada_.”

Gabe went from sprawled across two laps to on his feet so fast that Jack would have sworn he hadn’t moved - but then again, he _did_ have that cloud thing going on.

“Shimada?” he growled, making Jesse wince. “Like _GENJI??_ ”

“Yes?” The word was very small, with Jesse shrinking into the couch because now all of them were staring at him with expressions ranging from surprise and disgust to horror and anger.

“Tell me,” Gabe growled, every inch as terrifying as he’d ever been, “that you are not seriously telling me you want _Hanzo Shimada_ to watch over you.”

“Can’t do that, Boss,” came the whispered response. “But he knows - he knows how bad he fucked up, and he wants to atone for that. He didn’t even know what alphas and omegas were!” Jesse’s voice went from a meek apology to a passionate argument with that sentence. “He didn’t know that he _was_ an alpha, or that he was attracted to me because I’m an omega, and I’m pregnant! He’ll die before he let any harm come to me, Gabe, I know it!”

The moment stretched, every eye on Gabriel to see what he would do, but Jack already knew. The hard lines around his husband’s eyes had softened even before Jesse uttered the word ‘atone’, and his posture had shifted from anger to display. Whatever had been redacted out of his reports on Genji, he knew _something_ that lent Jesse’s words more weight than they would normally have. It was entirely possible that the omega had no idea what his former commander knew, but when Gabe nodded once in a neat motion, he knew he was off the hook. Jack contrived to look stern and disapproving, but it was a well-polished act because he trusted his husband’s judgment.

“Do you have a way to contact him?” Gabe demanded, not addressing their pseudo-son’s arguments.

Without a word, Jesse dug out his phone and pulled up Hanzo’s contact page.

“See if he’s available to talk.” The words were hard and heavy.

Nervously, Jesse typed on the phone. A moment later, it buzzed with a reply and he didn’t quite manage to hide the brief, shy smile that bloomed in response before he lifted his head. “He is.”

“Call him. Speakerphone.”

The ring sounded out, once...twice...

 _“Jesse?”_ Hanzo’s voice was sharp and worried. _“Is everything okay?”_

“Yes and no,” Jesse answered. “You see...there’s an event coming up and my pumpkin’s still got work and can’t get away and right now I’m staying with some family, but three of them have to go to this event and no one wants me to be unprotected so...”

It was three breaths before Hanzo spoke again. _“And so, you have called me with them listening because they wish to test me and see if I am worthy of protecting you.”_

“Yeah. They kind of...” Jesse looked around and winced away from everyone’s gazes. “They all know Genji, too.”

 _“I see.”_ The words were stiff and cold. _“They know me only for the sin I committed, and rightfully do not trust me to protect a vulnerable omega when I so brutally brought my own brother down. My honor is no doubt worthless in their eyes, but it was my duty by the laws of family to protect him, and my duty according to the elders to slay him, and I heeded the wrong call of duty. I would atone for my sin by protecting you, Jesse McCree, in your vulnerable state - with my life, if need be.”_

“A good start,” Angela said coldly, “but only a start.”

Jesse winced. “That’s...”

“I am the one who kept Genji from death’s door,” she finished for him.

 _“I see.”_ Hanzo sounded like he was facing his executioner: no longer defiant, but humbling himself instead. _“Genji told me that he had forgiven me, but that I had to forgive myself. That is something I cannot do until I have atoned for my sin. Please,”_ he said simply. _“Allow me to protect this man and the child he carries and in doing so, pay for what I did to my brother and the future I stole from him.”_

Angela’s face softened slightly; so, Jack was surprised to discover, did Ana’s. Each of them turned to Gabe and nodded slightly, both to convey their approval and to pretend they did not see Jesse blushing.

“Boss?” Jesse asked softly, pleading with his eyes for a sign while Gabriel’s face remained impassive and unreadable to everyone except Jack.

Gabe gestured for the phone, and Jesse relinquished it. “I am Gabriel Reyes,” he declared, throwing the words out like a dominance challenge. “The head of Blackwatch and Jesse’s father-figure. I was Genji’s commander and helped him channel his rage and pain into constructive activities until he was ready to try to make something else of himself. I know all about how you were raised,” he continued, his voice softening unexpectedly, “the conditioning and the warped education, and I know that you will _literally_ give your life to protect Jesse, if it comes down to that. So as long as his mate approves of you...the rest of us do, as well.”

Three surprised looks came Jack’s way, but he kept his eyes on his husband and a gentle smile on his face. He did, however, nod in answer to the unspoken questions.

“I will reach out to her,” Gabe continued. “She’ll no doubt reach out to you and arrange a face-to-face meeting.”

 _“I look forward to it,”_ Hanzo said, his voice shaking slightly. _“Thank you for this opportunity. I will not fail you.”_

Gabe handed the phone back to Jesse, who switched to voice and murmured something to the other man before hanging up, and resumed his reclined position on his mates’ laps. “So,” he said cheerfully, “he thought you were sent to kill him?”

Jesse shook himself and smiled. “I was telling Angela that I’d have to hunt Genji down and tell him about Sombra and the baby, but all Hanzo heard was _he doesn’t know_ and _track down that damned Shimada_.”

“And then he mooned over you while beating himself up over having feelings for his killer?” Gabe half-asked while Jack kneaded his shoulder absently. “That’s hilarious. Please tell me you’re going to tell Genji that story.”

“I will,” Jesse promised, chuckling. “I will.”

 

* * *

 

~Hanzo~

He’d thought that having Jesse McCree flay him down to his beating heart without raising his voice was the most vulnerable he would ever feel. As he hung up with a murmured _talk later_ burning in his ears, Hanzo realized how mistaken he’d been. Although only two people had spoken, Gabriel Reyes and whoever the female doctor had been, he was certain that there had been others. Gabriel Reyes was supposed to have died, along with his husband Strike-Commander Morrison, but Hanzo would have put money on both alphas having been there. Being judged by two alphas he could not see and at least one woman of undetermined type who _detested_ him for his sins was more nerve-wracking an experience than he’d ever expected to endure, and his first thought was that there was a liquor store down the street.

 _No,_ he thought as he set the phone down and sat on the floor. He would meditate, calm his breathing and his thoughts, and not seek the false comfort of the bottle. This was his chance at redemption, his opportunity to be the _true man_ he was supposed to have been, and he would _not_ shame himself by getting drunk.

Besides...he would be contacted by Jesse’s mate soon and his worthiness would be judged. He would not risk ruining his chances by being inebriated when the call came in.

So he sat, and he meditated on the fact that he had _feelings_ for a man who knew the worst he had done and still did not shun him for it. A man who had opened his eyes to truths that had been hidden from him. A man who was carrying the child of the dangerous-seeming woman who was his _mate_. What was he doing, what was he hoping for? A fairy-tale ending to his sordid story was impossible; Jesse was mated to Sombra, and he refused to wish any unhappiness on the man. Better for them to be happy together while he suffered unrequited love in silence.

Hanzo frowned at that last thought.

Love? Was that really what he felt? Was it even possible to fall for another person so rapidly? On the other hand, the more relevant question was if he would even be able to _recognize_ the emotion after the strict and twisted upbringing he’d survived. Surely this was a different expression of the concept: platonic love, or the brotherly love he should have been feeling for Genji.

His heart twinged. _Genji_. For years he’d loathed himself for slaying his brother, and the discovery that Genji had survived had not been easy to accept. His beloved brother was more machine than man, a mechanical abomination, and it was hard to accept that this glowing _thing_ could even have a human heart, much less feel such emotions as _pity_. Ah, and there it was - Hanzo resented his brother for _daring_ to pity him. Him, the older brother! The one who had not lost great portions of his body, the one who had had to live with the knowledge that he had...

...that he had...

...but Genji _had_ had to live with the repercussions of Hanzo’s actions. The years that Hanzo had spent wrestling with self-loathing and guilt, Genji had spent wrestling with betrayal and loss, loathing and rage. Adjusting to the machinery that made up his body while also struggling to come to terms with the reality of his situation. Wrestling with the twin desires to do unto Hanzo as had been done unto him, and seeking comfort from the very same person who had betrayed him. Genji’s whole world had been shattered; he had woken up in hell and fought his way back into the world, had struggled and overcome and sought out his brother out of...

...out of love.

Tears slipped down Hanzo’s cheeks as it sank in that Genji still loved him. That it had _hurt_ to see Hanzo consumed by his self-loathing. Truly, he was not worthy of the forgiveness Genji offered him.

He was not worthy, and thus, his honor demanded that he _become_ worthy.

A weight lifted from his chest; it didn’t matter that he wasn’t sure yet what he felt for Jesse. He would be a stoutly loyal protector, everything he should have been for Genji, and worry about the rest as it happened. All that mattered was that Jesse was safe and happy, and he would lay down his life to ensure that end.

 

* * *

 

When he woke up the next morning, he discovered an email confirmation on his phone for a pre-paid reservation he had no memory of making. As he stared at it, wondering if it was a trap, a text arrived from...his own number?

 _I’ll be waiting_ was all it said, but it was signed with a purple skull-shape that he was positive had not come from an emoji set, and that suggested it was from Sombra.

He packed up and checked out that morning, determined to not be late for his meeting with Jesse’s mate.

 

* * *

 

The hotel was fancier than he’d expected, with a wholly omnic staff. Hanzo wasn’t completely comfortable with the glorified robots, but he couldn’t deny that they made the process...less annoying than dealing with a human behind the desk. The room itself, when he got up to it, was filled with the latest in technological comforts and empty of intimidating alpha women. He gave in to his curiosity and explored thoroughly, from entertainment to kitchen and refreshment to the enticingly luxurious bathroom, and when he emerged into the main room again he was _beyond_ startled to see Sombra just _appear_ in front of him. Rather than shout and reach for a weapon, however, he swallowed the violent reflex and bowed.

“Sombra, I presume,” he said mildly.

“That’s me,” she answered coolly. “Hanzo, right?”

“Correct.”

She prowled around him, wearing something outlandish that looked less like clothes than armor, and not very much like armor, either. His skin crawled at her examination and he clenched his hands into fists in order to keep still. Finally, she came back around to the front to give him a dismissive look that had him clench his jaw to keep a growl behind his teeth.

Sombra stepped forward and got right up into his face. “If anything happens to Jesse,” she said in a tone of deadly quiet, a statement of bald fact that held no buster or threat, “I will make you wish you had never been born.”

Hanzo swallowed his growl and forced himself to look her right in her purple eyes. “If anything happens to him,” he informed her in exactly the same tone, “it will be because I have already given my life in his defense.”

For a long moment they stared at each other, two alphas silently challenging their rival. Then Sombra nodded once, briskly. “You’ll do,” she said, every bit as impersonal as a clap on the shoulder.

Then, to his surprise, she smiled.

“So the event is in Venice,” she said, turning to take a few steps away and break the tension by leaving his personal space. “I want him close, but not _too_ close, you know? The baby’s not due for two weeks after, and he’ll be with Angela, but the best doctor in the world isn’t as good as a hospital. So I want him close enough that if the baby decides it’s time, the two of you can get him to a hospital and I can come running just as soon as the event is over. But at the same time, I don’t want anyone unfriendly to find him _or_ you. This hotel is sort of owned by a friend of mine, so I brought you here for the meeting in order to check the place out. What do you think?” Sombra asked, turning back to face him. “The security passes my standards, but I want a second opinion on comfort.”

Hanzo blinked. Then, moving purposefully, he brushed past her to sit on the couch. Then he sprawled full-length on the couch, paused, sat up, and tried a variety of positions, trying to emulate the ungainly motions of a man nearly ready to give birth. He checked for a footstool and removed both shoes and socks to test it out. He attempted to stand up without the use of his core muscles. He shuffled over to the bed and repeated his testing, tugging the covers down and re-arranging the pillows in a variety of configurations. Then he headed into the bathroom and tested both the toilet and the shower for ease of use and roominess. Sombra stayed where she was, watching him act like a lunatic as he wracked his brain for every possible way the hotel room could inconvenience a heavily pregnant man.

Neither of them said a word until he had completed his investigations and returned to stand before her, slightly winded.

“Yes,” he said stiffly, attempting to calm his breathing without looking like he was even the least bit out of breath. “I judge this room acceptable for Jesse’s comfort.”

Sombra’s eyebrows arched. “You’re very thorough.”

“My honor demands nothing less.”

“Good,” she said cheerfully. “I want you to stay in this room for a week. Test out all the amenities, time the room service, see what’s good to eat that delivers, the works. When the time comes, the three of you will be in a suite with a king-sized bed in the master bedroom. If my mate wants company in bed...” She let it trail off ominously.

“His wish is my command,” Hanzo informed her primly.

“ _Very_ good.” Sombra tilted her head thoughtfully. “What do you do?”

His expression chilled somewhat. “I kill people,” he said flatly.”

Fingers flicked in dismissal. “Not that. What do you do _for omegas?_ ”

Oh. Hanzo relaxed again. “I sing,” he said reluctantly. “It may not be much, but Jesse seemed to enjoy it. We spoke after you left the resort,” he added by way of explanation.

Sombra gestured him to the couch. “Sit. Tell me all about it,” she said, already moving to perch on one end of it. “I don’t _like_ having another alpha near my mate, one who’s _not_ family to him, but my skill is finding the best of anything for my omegas and right now I’m shopping for someone who can keep my mate company and protect him, so...sell yourself to me.”

It was an unusual prospect, Hanzo thought as he sat and composed himself. Listing his strengths instead of his flaws, talking himself up instead of hearing himself torn down. But then again, this whole _situation_ was an unusual prospect. And, after all, hadn’t he been thinking about how to turn his thinking around and re-make himself as everything a _true man_ should be? This was his chance.

Hanzo drew a breath and started talking.

 

* * *

 

~Gabriel~

January would normally be a dreary month. The warm joy of Christmas fading into the disillusionment of broken New Year’s resolutions, the chill and grey anticipation of Valentine’s Day more than a month away. While he was in Talon, he loathed this part of the year more than any other because it served to remind him that he had a spouse, _somewhere_ , who he could not remember and who would likely recoil in horror from what he had become.

Not this year.

The glorious freedom of having _his own skin_ again meant he could indulge in sewing without having to sheathe his arms in latex and wear a surgical mask to keep his dead skin from flaking off into his project. And _that_ meant he could - and did - lose entire hours to indulging the creative drive he’d gone so long without remembering. Of course, the fact that he was sewing the costume that would be his extended “fuck you” to the heads of Talon just made it that much better.

His husband, his sweet Elote, sneaking in to interrupt with kisses and remind him about things like eating and sleeping didn’t detract from the experience any, either.

Nights were spent with Jack and their dove, freely expressing affection through kisses and physical contact, and he could participate without having to scrub himself down first or feeling guilty that he’d left their bed full of soft grey particles. He could kiss his mates good morning without feeling like a zombie, and the return to normalcy was an almost unbearable relief.

The ability to dissolve into smoke was still there, and he used it to cheat outrageously, sneaking up on one or the other of his mates to apply kisses to cheeks or shoulders, to wrap his arms around them and just revel in the heat of physical contact. He also used it to fetch his pseudo-son things almost before he finished asking for them.

Once, Gabriel tried to explain to his little family what it felt like to _have_ a family again after years of not knowing if he had _anyone_ , but only Ana really understood.

The weeks flew by in a haze of kisses and red velvet, Jesse’s belly swelling slowly, and although he kept on top of the plans with Sombra, it was still nearly a surprise when he woke up one morning and realized that _today was the day_. Today, they finished packing their bags. Today, they piled into Ana’s car and called a taxi and took a road trip. Today, they would check into the hotel and meet Hanzo in the flesh, face to face, alpha to alpha. It would be a few days until the day Talon went down in flames (or, more accurately, a hail of bullets), but today...

Today, everything they had been working towards was set in motion.

Breakfast was brief and excited, everyone scurrying around tucking toiletries into their bags and making sure everything was packed. The auto-cab arrived on time and as per the arrangements they’d argued out over the last week, he and Angela piled their bags in the trunk before helping Jesse get settled in the back. If anything should happen, Gabriel was the one best-suited to taking out threats while Angela could handle medical emergencies. Ana and Jack would be following in her car.

The trip itself wound up being almost boring, but Gabriel vastly preferred that to any kind of excitement. The hotel was exactly as described, and it was with a mixture of anticipatory excitement and tension that they road the elevator to their suite. After all of Genji’s stories, what would Hanzo actually be like? Jesse was unabashedly delighted and excited, which boded well, but Gabriel hadn’t been head of Blackwatch for all those years to _not_ plan for more dire outcomes. However, when the door opened and the man on the couch looked up from his holo-screen with the startled air of a deer scenting wolves, he found himself relaxing.

“Commander Reyes,” Hanzo said with a deep bow once the door had closed behind them. “Strike-Commander Morrison. Captain...Amari?” The name was uttered in a tone of surprise.

“Correct,” she answered coolly, dropping her bag to approach and stare him down. Hanzo straightened stiffly, standing at attention while she examined him, and finally she nodded her approval. “You may call me Ana.”

“Ana,” he repeated, bowing to her. “It is an honor.”

“And this is Angela,” Jesse said warmly, gesturing to the doctor. “She’s pretty much my sister in this little family.”

Hanzo began to bow, but flinched away from her harsh look. After a moment, she shook her head.

“I will not subject you to my judgment,” she half-apologized. “Gabriel and Ana have given their approval, and so has Sombra. Genji has forgiven you, and it would be needlessly cruel of me to punish you on behalf of him and for the actions he has already forgiven.”

“I thank you for your mercy,” Hanzo said humbly, bowing low. “I will do everything in my power to make up for the things I did to my brother. Jesse, it is good to see you again. You look...”

“Like a whale,” Jesse finished, hands going to the small of his back.

“Do you require refreshment from your journey?” Hanzo asked, looking about to leap into motion. “Or simply rest? The bed is quite comfortable, and there are many pillows.”

Jesse perked up at that. “Wouldn’t mind stretching out, now that you mention it.”

Gabriel chuckled. “Go rest, mijo. We’ll get settled in.”

“I will escort and assist you,” Hanzo offered. “Here, this way.”

“Wait.” Angela stood from where she had been rummaging in Jesse’s bag, a loose flannel nightshirt in one hand. “Help him into this.”

For a long moment, Hanzo hesitated, feeling the weight of trust being laid on him as Angela placed the cloth bundle in his hands. Then he bowed again. “Arigatou gozaimasu,” he murmured.

They watched him walk Jesse into what had to be the master bedroom, and exchanged approving looks as the door closed behind them.

“What a polite young man,” Jack said in his best Old Man voice. “I like him.”

Ana snorted.

 

* * *

 

The next few days made them all feel comfortable with the idea of leaving Jesse in Hanzo’s hands. He was every inch as attentive as they all felt a mate should be, fetching anything Jesse required and often singing in a surprisingly pleasant voice, deep and rich like smooth dark chocolate. With that concern off their minds, they were able to pack and dress on the morning of Carnival and focus completely on their tasks. Ana and Jack had their respective rifles hidden in instrument cases or disguised as something else, and as he kissed his husband for luck, Jack asked where _his_ guns were, since Gabriel had discarded his shotguns along with his armor back on Gibraltar.

Laughing evilly, Gabriel raised his hands melodramatically and flexed the program of his nanites, his laughter deepening as they re-created his shotguns.

“This is what I’ve always done with them,” he explained as he tossed them casually aside. “Infinite guns. They dissolve and return to me. Only good thing about...what happened to me.”

Ana rolled her eye in tolerant amusement. “Why am I not surprised that you found a way to be even _more_ dramatic?” She leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Go; be as dramatic as your heart desires. Meet us back here and tell us all about it.”

Gabriel hugged her. “Bring Amelié back safe.” Then he hugged his sweetheart. “Bring Ana back safe.”

“I promise, babe,” Jack murmured. “Go. Make them all pay for what they did.”

“I will,” Gabriel promised in a growl. “Hanzo! Ittekimasu,” he called, grinning as the other man’s expression blanked in surprise and Jesse snickered.

“I-Itterasshai,” Hanzo called back, stumbling over the word a little in surprise.

“Somethin’ we picked up from Genji,” Jesse started as the other three slipped out of the hotel suite.

The door closed on whatever else he might have said, and Gabriel grinned at his husband and their old friend. “Good hunting,” he said softly, offering one fist.

“Good hunting,” they repeated, covering his hand with theirs and completing a ritual they hadn’t really used since the end of the Crisis. They strolled towards the elevator; he dissolved into the air vents.

For the most part, Gabriel traveled as black smoke. He wove his way between ankles and slipped unseen around corners, drifted through crowds and misted under doors. When he stopped to triangulate his position, the Blackwatch communicator relayed bits of whatever was going on around Sombra. He heard Widowmaker announce that her target had been eliminated, and his heart squeezed to hear that voice, familiar in two ways but strange at the same time. He’d never thought, back when he was only Reaper, that she would have had any tie to whoever he’d once been. He said a silent prayer for Jack and Ana and moved on, close enough now to just blend in with the crowd.

Sombra kept a running commentary as he approached, letting him know where the guards would need to be ‘neutralized’ and where she’d already ‘turned out the lights’.

 _"Everyone’s in place except Ogundimu and Vialli,”_ Sombra said as he approached a stone bridge leading to a relatively-isolated keep. _“But Ogundimu doesn’t know that.”_

“Perfect,” Gabriel - no, for this, he was _Reaper_ \- growled.

Glad that he’d gone for stealth over drama and made his boots soft-soled, Reaper drifted like the personification of plague over cobblestones towards the big man in ostentatious purple. The soft cry of Vialli being tossed over the edge came back on the wind, and silently he followed Ogundimu through the doors and down a corridor lined with statues, grinning behind his skull mask because of _course_ this was Prospero, and that just made his Red Death costume _completely_ perfect. Smugly, Reaper slipped into the meeting room behind the ‘Prince’ and quickly sat in the seat closest to the door. Those already present saw him enter but thought he was Vialli, while Ogundimu made a one-man procession out of circling half the room to take his seat and did not see Reaper until he was already seated. There was half a moment where he could _see_ the bigger man wonder if the man in the red costume had been there when he entered, but then he removed his hat and wig and leaned forward.

“We have a war to start,” he said ominously.

From the far end of the table came a cold, sharp voice that Gabriel remembered all too well, but Reaper had never heard. “Presumptuous of you,” Moira said derisively. “I believe Vialli has something to say about that.”

“Vialli is no longer concerned with anything in this world,” Ogundimu sneered back.

There was a tense silence. “But if you killed him,” Moira said, her voice shaking the slightest bit, “then who is _that?”_

She pointed at Gabriel - at _Reaper_ \- and every eye followed her gesture, expressions changing from confusion to fear and anger as they realized there was an intruder in their midst.

“Remove your mask,” demanded Ogundimu, but Moira let out an unholy screech.

“You fool,” she shouted, recoiling away from the table. “Phantom of the Opera - the Red Death! He’s here to kill us all!”

Laughing darkly, Reaper pulled the skull away from his face and let them all see exactly who he was. Ogundimu’s expression went from anger to shock and more than a hint of fear-

“I TOLD YOU SO!!” Moira’s scream echoed against the stone walls as Reaper manifested both shotguns. “I TOLD YOU S-”

The first shot blew her head off. The second took Ogundimu’s. The other humans in the room began screaming, flinging themselves out of their chairs and struggling to get to safety, but there was no safety to be found. Only Reaper’s deep laughter punctuated by the barking of his shotguns as he gunned them all methodically down. When the echoes faded, only the omnic and Reaper were left intact.

“In her defense,” the omnic said with faint amusement, “she _did_ warn us that if you had survived, you would find a way to kill them all.”

Grinning, Reaper picked up the skull mask and fitted it back over his face. “Well, she would know.” He hesitated. “Thank you,” he said softly. “For helping me. I remember what it was like to not have a solid form at all, much less _my body_.”

“Maximilien,” the omnic introduced himself. “If Sombra hadn’t told you who I am already. I may have certain...lifestyle differences....from many of my fellow omnics, but I _do_ value life and liberty and the pursuit of wealth, and the present would have been _vastly_ different if not for some of the actions of Blackwatch in the past. The dreadful business with Null Sector, for example. I hope that my actions on your behalf have convinced you that I have no interest in a war between humans and omnics.”

“Enough that I’m not going to take you down right here,” Reaper countered. “It’s been a rough couple of years. I just want a quiet life with my loved ones.”

“Then I will conduct my affairs quietly, and endeavor to not give you a reason to hunt me down,” the omnic said with a bow. “It was a pleasure watching you work, Commander Reyes. May we never meet under such circumstances again.”

Reaper laughed. “Well said. Enjoy Carnival, Maximilien.”

Splattered with red that did not show against his costume, he left the way he had arrived: silent and ominous, bearing a grin that expressed no joy.

 

* * *

 

When he reached the hotel, he misted inside and up the elevator shaft, devouring his costume as he re-formed on their floor. A quiet murmur from behind the door to the suite hinted that the others had returned before him, but when he opened the door he discovered that not only were Jack and Ana there, but Amelié’s unconscious body was propped up in an armchair and Sombra was covering her _very_ pregnant mate with kisses while Hanzo watched from between Ana and Angela on the other couch.

“Success,” Gabriel announced as heads turned towards him. “Talon is down to a single head, one smart enough to make friends with anyone who could find and take him down.”

“I knew y’could do it, Boss,” Jesse called lazily from the couch.

“No trouble on our end,” Jack assured him from a loveseat, beckoning his husband over for celebratory kisses. “There wasn’t even a fight. Ana pretty much sucker-punched Amelié with a sleep dart, and I dragged her off. We stuck a costume on her and made like we were taking our drunk friend home.”

Gabriel sprawled shamelessly in his sweetheart’s lap, feet dangling off the arm. “Excellent. And now, dove, I turn command over to you. What’s our next move?”

“We return to Zurich,” Angela said firmly. “I need to undo what has been done to poor Amelié, and for that I need proper facilities.”

“We’re staying here,” Sombra announced. “No offense, but your place is just a little small for all of us, and I’ve registered Jesse with a very good omega birth program here. He’ll stay in the lap of luxury until he goes into labor, and be able to _recover_ in the lap of luxury afterwards. Besides,” she added, grinning, “it’s close enough that you all can come visit and stay in the suite.”

“I am remaining here as well,” Hanzo said quietly. “Jesse and Sombra will need another body to assist them, and I will _not_ leave him unprotected while he is so vulnerable. Sombra’s skill is finding the best of anything,” he added with a note of gratification, “and she has determined that I am the best bodyguard and manservant for her mate. When they return to Dorado, I will go with them.”

Four sets of eyebrows went up, and Jesse blushed slightly.

Slowly, Gabriel grinned. “Please,” he said, practically begging. “ _Please_ put the call on speaker when you tell Genji everything.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Jack said, muscles flexing delightfully as he stood with Gabriel in his arms. “He’s just drunk with victory. Do whatever makes you comfortable. I’m just going to put this shameless bastard to bed before he embarrasses himself any further.”

Cheerfully, Gabriel waved over Jack’s shoulder as he was carried from the room to the sounds of three omegas laughing. In the morning, they would pack up and say a temporary goodbye to Jesse and Sombra and Hanzo. In the morning, they would deal with the can of worms that was Widowmaker. In the morning, they would return to Zurich. But for tonight, they were two husbands who had cheated death one last time and they were going to celebrate by worshipping each other with the enthusiasm they’d had on their wedding night.

“You’re gorgeous, Elote,” Gabriel murmured as Jack set him on the bed.

“I’m old and scarred and the hair I have left is white,” he countered, hands going to Gabriel’s pants.

“Like I said.” Grinning, Gabriel misted out of his clothes and reformed behind his husband, hands slipping under his waistband to caress skin. “Gorgeous.”

Jack laughed softly. “You’re incorrigible, Churrito.” He turned in his darling’s arms, leaving Gabriel’s hands on his ass instead of fondling his cock. “You’re the gorgeous one. Always have been. Even when you looked like a zombie and shed like it was snowing.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, but he was grinning. “Such a romantic. Shut up and put your dick in my mouth, Elote.”

“Now who’s the romantic?” Jack teased, unzipping his pants and letting them fall to the floor.

There was no answer; Jack sat on the bed and lay back, groaning, as his husband feasted.


	5. Epilogue

~Hanzo~

 

If you had told him, two years ago, that this would be his life, he probably would have killed you for your insolence.

Somehow, caring for Jesse as he recovered from giving birth and assisting with caring for baby Michael had turned into being accepted as some sort of addition in Jesse and Sombra’s relationship. Not that he and Sombra were in the least attracted to each other, of course. Although they were both in love with Jesse, neither of them were interested in other alphas. Learning that he was _only_ attracted to omegas answered many questions he’d asked himself over the years. But they accepted that Jesse’s happiness came first, and to be without either of them would make him miserable, so they forged a partnership centered around making their cowboy (and his son) happy.

Hanzo suspected that his willingness to tend to Michael’s needs in the middle of the night were what endeared him the most to the other alpha, but none of them mentioned it. Sombra was frustrated by her body producing breastmilk for the baby, but she pumped rigorously and Hanzo took over feeding and changing diapers, letting Michael’s parents rest, and he honestly found it...fulfilling.

After a few months, the three of them sat down to discuss the fact that Jesse’s unbonded scent gland was open - and so were both of Hanzo’s. It was Sombra who explained to him what that meant, and gave her blessing to Jesse and Hanzo becoming mates as well.

That night was the first time he was intimate with another person, and he was grateful that Jesse was there to guide him without mocking his ignorance. It was the first time, also, that he had showed his ‘dragon’ to anyone else, and knowing that it was his alpha erection made the experience less mystical than he’d thought it was, but somehow more special at the same time. Still, he was shy, revealing that part of himself to Jesse - but the other man was awestruck at the sight.

“It’s really a dragon,” he said, reaching out as if to touch the curved, ridged shape. “I thought you were just being colorful, but...it’s really a dragon’s head and neck, and it’s...kinda cute.”

“Cute?” Hanzo asked, torn between indignant outrage and flustered humor.

“Well, yeah, look...” Jesse took a picture and showed it to him. “Lookit that cute little head. It looks like it’s peeking out to say hello.”

It did, and it was, and Hanzo could only collapse onto the bed, laughing in defeat. The laughter changed to groaning as Jesse worked the head of the dragon into his omega orifice, making sounds of pleasure as he did, and then there were no more words.

 

* * *

 

Settling into life in Dorado was easier than Hanzo thought it would be. Ironically, the size of Sombra’s mansion and the business she ran made it easier to adjust for its similarities to his own upbringing. Having a second mate, and a third parent, gave Sombra the freedom to balance her work with her family while ensuring that Jesse and Michael did not suffer for her absence.

Discovering that Sombra’s thriving business empire was built on _porn_ was a shock. It took Hanzo several weeks to stop flushing when she mentioned anything having to do with work, and discovering that she and Jesse had met when she hired him to have sex with her on camera had been a deeply uncomfortable revelation.

It hadn’t stopped him from watching the performances, but it _did_ make him feel deeply ashamed for the arousal he felt watching Jesse pleasure and be pleasured.

Sombra had branched out from the male omega/female alpha porn that had made her fortune, and built a network of queer alphas and omegas who happily fucked in a variety of gender configurations. Although she had started with just her own little high-tech studio, the fall of Talon had left her with resources and contacts in several areas of the world and within the year she had half a dozen satellite locations and a growing headache because managing them all had swiftly exceeded her personal skills.

The next several months had seen a series of inept or corrupt business managers come and go, frustrating Sombra and Hanzo both with their failure to adequately manage her porn empire. It came as a surprise to him the day he realized that _he_ would be a better manager than any of the candidates she was interviewing, and that it was the training he had gone through as his father’s heir that gave him the skills to do it. He took a quiet afternoon to craft a resume for himself and submitted it without telling Sombra what he was doing, and when she came to him with a question on her face, he was ready. He argued his merits passionately but clearly, emphasizing that his unique status as a member of the household made for unparalleled transparency and accountability, and in the end, she agreed to a trial period that quickly turned permanent.

If you had told him that he would one day manage the details of running a porn empire, he would have killed you for the insult, but he found it...satisfactory. To use the skills he had been forced to learn made him feel accomplished, challenged, and rewarded. Knowing that he was doing his part to support the household was deeply satisfying, and within a few months he would have said that his life lacked nothing. Genji was _happy_ for him, delighted that his brother had let go of the toxic resentment and self-loathing that had plagued him for so long. He had a mate who adored his singing, he was flourishing in his career, and he could honestly look at himself in the mirror and be proud of the man - the _true_ man - staring back at him.

With Michael now sleeping through the night, he had even become comfortable sharing Jesse’s bed with Sombra for maximum nighttime cuddles. He was a full member of the household and the relationship, a partner with Sombra in every way but the physical, and it was surprising how _good_ that felt. No, he thought as he joined them in bed, his life was perfect and he could not think of a single thing that would improve it.

Jesse cleared his throat as Hanzo settled in next to him, Sombra already lounging on his other side. “Had my physical while I was visiting Angela,” he announced.

Sombra hummed. “Anything special?”

“She said I’m in fine health...”

“And?” Hanzo asked, frowning. The cowboy was holding something back, or he wouldn’t be dragging this out.

“...and that she’ll be visiting regularly to make sure the pregnancy is progressing smoothly.”

Hanzo choked while Sombra sat bolt upright, purple nightie slipping down over one shoulder.

“Yer gonna be a dad, Hanzo,” Jesse finished in a smugly cheerful tone.

The words echoed, roaring, in his ears and the world faded to grey as Hanzo struggled to process this shock. A delightful shock, yes, but a complete and total shock none the less.

Sombra recovered first, smiling gleefully and kissing Jesse soundly to congratulate him. As Hanzo’s sight returned, however, she frowned. “Tell me I’m not...”

Jesse kissed her frowning lips. “Sorry, pumpkin.”

With a dramatic groan, she flopped back over. “You’re lucky he loves you,” she mock-threatened Hanzo. “It’s not _fair!_ ”

“She’s gonna be producing breastmilk again,” Jesse said, eyes dancing.

“It’s not even my child this time!”

“But Sombra,” Hanzo said, struggling to keep his face and voice to an earnest deadpan. “Who else would you trust to produce such vital nourishment for Jesse’s child?”

Sombra sat up and glared at him, but he could see that she was struggling not to laugh. “Don’t you dare turn my expertise against me,” she complained.

Hanzo’s lips twitched. “It is no fault of mine that you are the ideal candidate for this situation.”

She groaned again and buried her face in Jesse’s flannel-covered chest. “If you fathered a girl, I’ll forgive you,” she grumbled. “Just pick a pretty name for her.”

Hanzo leaned in to hug both of them, unable to keep the giddy smile off his face. “Words cannot express my happiness,” he murmured.

“Well, I’ve got one for you,” Jesse purred, bending to kiss him.

If you’d told him that one day, his life would be perfect, he never would have believed you. But now...

“Aishiteru,” breathed Jesse.

...it was.

 

 


End file.
